§ Maurice Cockrill, RA, FBA, (British, 1936-2013) Two Flames oil on canvas 20 x 25cm (8 x 10in) Provenance: Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, 1989 (label verso) Lyon & Turnbull, Edinburgh, 27 Septmeber 2008, lot 46 Other Notes: Pavel Tchelitchew and his family were forced to flee their native Moscow during the Russian Revolution in 1917. From 1918 until 1920, Tchelitchew studied at the Kiev Academy under Alexandra Exeter, a former pupil of Fernand Leger, and in 1919 he designed his first production, ‘The Geisha’. In 1920 he moved to Odesa and whilst here, he continued to work on set designs for local theatres. He moved to Germany and eventually settled in Berlin in 1921, where he stayed until 1923. It was during his final year in Germany that Tchelitchew was commissioned to design the set for Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera,‘Coq d’Oro’ for the Berlin State Opera. The play was a folktale that had been rewritten as a political satire of the Tsarist dictatorship. ‘It was about a Tsar who had forgotten his kingdom and caroused with the ladies of the court while a Golden Cockerel kept watch’ (D. Windham, Dance Index, New York, 1944, p.7). The play ran for four seasons and was popular due to the humour it offered Russian expatriates living in Berlin, enabling them to distance themselves from the tragedies they had experienced. The sets were designed after Russian peasant folk prints of a carnival, and this s highlighted using gold and silver speckles in the designs. There are strong influences of Cubism and Russian Constructivism in the designs for Coq d’Or, which are probably a result of Tchelitchew’s friendship with El Lissitzky, one of the leading Constructivist artists in Germany.