Val Telberg, The Seine, circa 1949
November 4, 2019
Vladimir Telberg-von-Teleheim, born in Moscow in 1910 to Swedish-Russian parents, spent most of his childhood in Asia, including Nagasaki, Shanghai, Tsingtao, and Peking, while attending French, British, Chinese, Japanese and American schools. Which makes it no surprise that he spent over fifty years as an artist creating complex dreamscapes that feature a multitude of diverse fragments drawn from personal experience.
After moving to New York in 1938, he went to Paris for two years in 1949, where he produced some of his most romantic and cinematic images. He was particularly drawn to the banks of the Seine, resulting in a lyrical series of unique works that juxtapose children with phantom-like adults. In the view above, there is a palpable disconnect between the two children and the solitary figure just beyond their reach, as if that lone individual existed not in their world, but as an apparition on a giant motion picture screen.
