“Hide-and-Seek”

            “Hide-and-Seek” is displayed in The Museum of Modern Art. The artist of this piece is Pavel Tchelitchew. It was made in 1940-2 and was painted with oils on canvas. Tchelitchew used many different colors such as green, yellow, brown, orange, red and blue. It really captured my eye and when reading up on about it, it said that the artist used these colors and this material in order to capture the emotions and the drama of the piece in a way that many other materials would not be able to. The artwork was made in Vermont during World War II.

The subject is the “apocalyptic” vision of the childhood game, hide and seek.  I noticed that at first glance you see what looks like a tree, but when looked at closer you can see the leaves make out the faces of little children. The children are looking up with their mouths open in fear. There is a mixture of life and nature. There are human characteristics here along with birds, butterflies and plants. You can see on the bottom of the tree is a new -born baby and on the bark of the tree is a woman climbing.  There are all hidden images within this artwork, such as a foot, hand, toes and fingers. Also within this piece you are able to see an X-ray vision of the body. You can see bones and veins within the arms, heads, and toes. The veins do a great job camouflaging because it looks as if they are the branches from the tree.

This painting is displayed on the wall facing you when you come off the escalator on the fourth floor. This floor is all about paintings and sculptures, but this painting is isolated. There are no other works of art surrounding it. It is probably placed this way so that everyone will have a chance to absorb the whole picture without being distracted by anything else. This picture is an extraordinary painting with many surprises. It deserves to be examined and well observed.

http://www.moma.org/collection_images/resized/355/w500h420/CRI_5355.jpg – this is a photo of the artwork