Pavel Tchelitchew

Pavel Tchelitchew (3 October {O.S. 21 September} 1898, Dubrovka, Russian Empire — 31 July 1957, Grottaferrata, Italy) was a Russian-American painter and stage & costume designer. He primarily worked in "avantgarde" genres as a visual artist, like surrealism, futurism, and constructivism, and was renowned for his collaboration with ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev and choreographer George Balanchine. Tchelitchew naturalized as a US citizen in 1952 but mostly lived in Italy. He was openly homosexual, dated American pianist Allen C. Tanner (1898—1987), and lived with poet Charles Henri Ford between 1934 and his death.

Born in a prosperous family of landowners in the Kaluga region, Pavel received a private education, encouraged by his father to pursue art and ballet. After the 1917 Revolution, the family fled Russia. Tchelitchev studied with Aleksandra Ekster in Kiyv, working as a theater set designer in Odessa and Berlin in the early 1920s. He relocated to Paris in 1923, where he soon acquintained with Gertrude Stein and, through her, Edith Sitwell, who became Pavel's close friend.