Tamara de Lempicka

(Polish, 1898–1980)

Tamara de Lempicka was a Polish painter known for her distinctive Art Deco style. In her self-portraits and depictions of chic figures, Lempicka simplified volume and space into tubular and crystalline forms. “My goal is never to copy, but to create a new style, clear luminous colors and feel the elegance of the models,” she once explained. Born on May 16, 1898 in Warsaw, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire) to a wealthy family, she spent much of her childhood in Switzerland and Italy where she was influenced by the works of Renaissance and Mannerist masters. Living in St. Petersburg during the 1917 Russian Revolution, she and her husband fled to France to escape the Bolsheviks. During the 1920s, Lempicka became an integral part of the Parisian avant-garde scene and was acquainted with Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and André Gide. It was here that she is said to have reinvented herself, while studying under both Maurice Denis and André Lhote. Her striking portrait of her curly-haired, blonde daughter, Kizette on the Balcony, notably earned the first-place prize the Exposition Internationale des Beaux-Arts in 1927.In 1939, the artist fled the impending threat of World War II for the United States, settling in Los Angeles and later New York. A renewed interest in her works during the mid-1960s led to an exhibition of Art Deco movement was held in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris and a major retrospective of Lempicka's art at the Galerie du Luxembourg in 1972. Lempicka died on March 18, 1980 in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Today, her works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes in France, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., among others.