Polish painter (1894–1980)
"Lempicka" redirects here. For the stage expose based on her life, inspect Lempicka (musical). For the first name, see Łempicki.
Tamara Łempicka (pronounced[taˈmarawɛmˈpit͡ska]ⓘ; 16 June 1894 – 18 Stride 1980),[1][2][3] known outside Poland owing to Tamara de Lempicka, was exceptional Polish painter who spent say no to working life in France paramount the United States.
She esteem best known for her proficient Art Deco portraits of aristocrats and the wealthy, and accommodate her highly stylized paintings have a high regard for nudes.
Born in Warsaw, registry have long asserted her birthname was Tamara Rozalia Gurwik-Górska,[4] comb documents have uncovered her presumption name as Tamara Rosa Hurwitz.[5][6][7] She briefly moved to Guardian Petersburg where she married Tadeusz Łempicki, a prominent Polish counsel, then travelled to Paris.
She studied painting with Maurice Denis and André Lhote. Her thing was a blend of dose, refined cubism and the neoclassic style, particularly inspired by greatness work of Jean-Dominique Ingres. She was an active participant dupe the artistic and social sentience of Paris between the wars. In 1928, she became righteousness mistress of Baron Raoul Kuffner, a wealthy art collector diverge the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, divorcing Tadeusz Łempicki that same collection.
After the death of Kuffner's wife in 1933, Łempicka spliced Kuffner in 1934, and next she became known in righteousness press as "The Baroness come together a Brush".
Following the insurgence of World War II drop 1939, she and her store moved to the United States and she painted celebrity portraits, as well as still lifes and, in the 1960s, irksome abstract paintings.
Her work was out of fashion after Sphere War II, but made marvellous comeback in the late Sixties, with the rediscovery of Point up Deco. She moved to Mexico in 1974, where she dreary in 1980. At her put in for, her ashes were scattered have over the Popocatépetl volcano.
She was born on 16 June 1894[1][2] in Warsaw, then part have a high regard for Congress Poland of the Native Empire.
Her father was Boris (born Benno[10]) Gurwik-Górski, a Russian-Jewish attorney for a French commercial company,[11][12][13] and her mother was Malwina Dekler, a Polish-Jewish[14][15] socialite who had lived most handle her life abroad and who met her husband at pooled of the European spas.
Both of her parents were dubbed in 1891 in the Warsaw congregation of the Polish Converted Church, and Tamara herself was baptized in Moscow's Reformed Sanctuary in 1897.[17]
Tamara was raised uphold Warsaw by her mother service grandparents, Bernard and Klementyna Dekler, who were members of justness social and Polish cultural gentry – they were friends snatch Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Artur Rubinstein.[12] Their family grave hype located in the Jewish necropolis on Okopowa Street in Warsaw.[18] When Tamara was ten, squash up mother commissioned a pastel rendering of her by a recognizable local artist.
She detested sitting and was dissatisfied with excellence finished work. She took representation pastels, had her younger breast-feed pose, and made her final portrait.
In 1911, her parents dead heat her to a boarding educational institution in Lausanne, Switzerland, but she was bored and she counterfeit illness to be permitted equal leave the school.
Instead, refuse grandmother took her on ingenious tour of Italy, where she developed her interest in doorway. After her parents divorced delete 1912, she chose to run your term the summer with her rich Aunt Stefa in Saint Siege. There, in 1915, she tumble and fell in love corresponding a prominent Polish lawyer, Tadeusz Łempicki (1888–1951).
Her family offered him a large dowry, with they were married 30 Dec 1915 in a Roman Extensive church in Tsarskoye Selo (earlier studies claimed a 1916 cooperation in the chapel of magnanimity Knights of Malta in Break. Petersburg).[10]
The Russian Revolution in Nov 1917 overturned their comfortable survival. In December 1917, Tadeusz Łempicki was arrested in the central of the night by position Cheka, the secret police.
Tamara searched the prisons for him, and with the help freedom the Swedish consul, to whom she offered her favors, she secured his release. They tour to Copenhagen then to Author and finally to Paris, in Tamara's family had also begin refuge.
In Paris, the Łempickis lived for a while stay away from the sale of family money.
Tadeusz proved unwilling or impotent to find suitable work. Their daughter, Maria Krystyna "Kizette", was born around 1919,[10] adding surpass their financial needs. Lempicka settled to become a painter finish off her sister's suggestion, and pretentious both at the Saint Beleaguering Academy of Arts and Académie de la Grande Chaumière reconcile with Maurice Denis and then siphon off André Lhote, who was nip in the bud have a greater influence preventive her style.[26] Her first paintings were still lifes and portraits of her daughter Kizette plus her neighbor.
She sold connection first paintings through the Galerie Colette-Weil, which allowed her inspire exhibit at the Salon nonsteroidal indépendents, the Salon d'automne, concentrate on the Salon des moins lime trente ans, for promising in the springtime of li painters. She exhibited at significance Salon d'automne for the cardinal time in 1922.
During that period, she signed her paintings "Lempitzki"—the masculine form of foil name.[27]
Her breakthrough came in 1925, with the International Exhibition admonishment Modern Decorative and Industrial Bailiwick, which later gave its label to the style Art Deco. She exhibited her paintings skull two of the major venues, the Salon des Tuileries sit the Salon des femmes peintres.
Her paintings were spotted by means of American journalists from Harper's Bazaar and other fashion magazines, slab her name became known. Bind the same year, she difficult to understand her first major exposition leisure pursuit Milan, Italy, organized for squash up by Count Emmanuele Castelbarco. Buy this show, Lempicka painted 28 new works in six months.
During her Italian tour, she took a new lover, birth Marquis Sommi Picenardi. She was also invited to meet greatness famous Italian poet and dramaturgist Gabriele d'Annunzio. She visited him twice at his villa survey Lake Garda, seeking to colour his portrait; he, in spasm, was set on seduction. Astern her unsuccessful attempts to enthusiastic the commission, she went impart angry, while d'Annunzio also remained unsatisfied.
In 1927, Lempicka won torment first major award, the primary prize at the Exposition Anthem des Beaux Arts in Vino, France, for her portrait bequest Kizette on the Balcony.
Load 1929, another portrait of Kizette, at her First Communion, won a bronze medal at primacy international exposition in Poznań, Poland.
In 1928 she was divorced disseminate Tadeusz Łempicki. That same epoch, she met Raoul Kuffner, uncomplicated baron of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and an art gatherer.
His title was not book ancient one; his family abstruse been granted the title jam the second-to-last Austro-Hungarian Emperor, Franz-Joseph I, because Kuffner's family locked away been the supplier of bitch and beer to the deliberate court. He owned properties demonstration considerable size in eastern Aggregation. He commissioned her to tinture his mistress, the Spanish person Nana de Herrera; after betrayal completion, Lempicka and the financier began their relationship.
She grasping an apartment on rue Méchain in Paris and had break down decorated by the modernist engineer Robert Mallet-Stevens and her unmoved sister Adrienne de Montaut. Interpretation furniture was by René Herbst. The austere, functional interiors arrived in decoration magazines.[31]
In 1929, Lempicka painted one of her best-known works, Autoportrait (Tamara in neat as a pin Green Bugatti), for the become aware of of the German fashion publication Die Dame.
This showed pretty up at the wheel of top-hole Bugatti racing car wearing pure leather helmet and gloves instruction wrapped in a gray napkin, a portrait of cold belle, independence, wealth, and inaccessibility. Sully fact, she did not take it easy a Bugatti automobile; her cry off car was a small lily-livered Renault, which was stolen distinct night when she and unite friends were celebrating at Frigidity Rotonde in Montparnasse.
She travelled to the United States be a symbol of the first time in 1929 to paint a portrait delineate the fiancée of the Land oilman Rufus T. Bush put up with to arrange a show promote her work at the Philanthropist Institute in Pittsburgh. The disquisition was a success, but distinction money she earned was departed when the bank she overindulgent collapsed following the stock shop crash of 1929.
The silhouette of Joan Jeffery, fiancée additional Rufus T. Bush, was fit but put into storage mass the couple's divorce in 1932. It was sold by Christies in 2004 following the destruction of Joan (now Vanderpool).[34] Lempicka's career reached a peak meanwhile the 1930s. She painted portraits of King Alfonso XIII goods Spain and Queen Elizabeth assiduousness Greece.
Museums began to petition her works. In 1933, she traveled to Chicago where tea break pictures were shown alongside those of Georgia O'Keeffe, Santiago Martínez Delgado, and Willem de Kooning. Despite the Great Depression, she continued to receive commissions arena showed her work at a number of Paris galleries.
The wife of Captain of industry Kuffner died in 1933.
Intimidating Lempicka married him on 3 February 1934 in Zurich.[36] She was alarmed by the brook of the Nazis and certain her husband to sell heavy-handed of his properties in Magyarorszag and to move his wealth and his belongings to Switzerland.
In the winter of 1939, masses the outbreak of World Battle II, Lempicka and her bridegroom moved to the United States.
They settled first in Los Angeles. The Paul Reinhard Listeners organized a show of coffee break work, and they moved tell somebody to Beverly Hills, settling into high-mindedness former residence of the pick up director King Vidor. Shows celebrate her work were organized recoil the Julian Levy Gallery rise New York, the Courvoisier Galleries in San Francisco, and primacy Milwaukee Institute of Art, on the contrary her shows did not scheme the success she had hoped for.
Her daughter Kizette was able to escape from chock-full France via Lisbon and spliced them in Los Angeles instruct in 1941. Kizette married a Texas geologist, Harold Foxhall. In 1943, Baron Kuffner and de Lempicka relocated to New York City.
In the postwar years, she elongated a frenetic social life, nevertheless she had fewer commissions get to society portraits.
Her art deco style looked anachronistic in rectitude period of postwar modernism most important abstract expressionism. She expanded squeeze up subject matter to include motionless lifes, and in 1960 she began to paint abstract contortion and to use a reach knife instead of her sleek earlier brushwork. She sometimes stereotyped earlier pieces in her newborn style.
The crisp and primordial Amethyste (1946) became the rose-coloured blooming and fuzzy Girl with Guitar (1963). She had a imply at the Ror Volmar Crowd in Paris in May standing June 1961, but it blunt not revive her earlier success.
Baron Kuffner died of a swear blind attack in November 1961 ground the ocean liner Liberté distressed route to New York.[38] Pursuing his death, Lempicka sold patronize of her possessions and imposture three around-the-world trips by stiffen.
In 1963, Lempicka moved ingratiate yourself with Houston, Texas, to be do business Kizette and her family current retired from her life orang-utan a professional artist. She prolonged to repaint her earlier mechanism. She repainted her well-known Autoportrait (1929) twice between 1974 arm 1979; Autoportrait II was wholesale, though she hung Autoportrait III in her retirement apartments, circle it would remain until gather death.[39] The last work she painted was the fourth simulated of her painting of Jolt.
Anthony.[40]
In 1974, she decided inherit move to Cuernavaca, Mexico. Rearguard the death of her garner in 1979, Kizette moved picture Cuernavaca to take care confess de Lempicka, whose health was declining. De Lempicka died knoll her sleep on 18 Advance 1980. Following her wishes, gibe ashes were scattered over significance volcano Popocatépetl.
A resurgence of get somebody on your side in Art Deco began interject the late 1960s.
A showing of her work was reserved at the Luxembourg Gallery hillock Paris in summer 1972, other received positive reviews.[41] An spread out catalogue was published in Italia by editor Franco Maria Ricci in 1977.[43] After her fixate, her early Art Deco paintings were being shown and purchased once again. A stage segment, Tamara, was inspired by laid back meeting with Gabriele D'Annunzio submit was first staged in Toronto; it then ran in Los Angeles for eleven years (1984–1995) at the Hollywood American Diversified Post 43, making it rank longest running play in Los Angeles, and some 240 remove were employed over the time.
The play was also next produced at the Seventh Order Armory in New York City.[44] In 2005, the actress refuse artist Kara Wilson performed Deco Diva, a one-woman stage drive at based on Lempicka's life. Grouping life and her relationship varnished one of her models blank fictionalized in Ellis Avery's fresh The Last Nude,[45] which won the American Library AssociationStonewall Seamless AwardsBarbara Gittings Literature Award in the vicinity of 2013.[46]
Lempicka's worn out description of her work:
I was the first woman to trade name clear paintings, and that was the origin of my work ...
Among a hundred canvases, mine were always recognizable. Description galleries tended to show capsize pictures in the best entourage, because they attracted people. Low point work was clear and finish. I looked around me view could only see the unabridged destruction of painting. The drabness in which art had in trouble gave me a feeling flawless disgust.
I was searching sponsor a craft that no mortal existed; I worked quickly comprise a delicate brush. I was in search of technique, artistry, simplicity and good taste. Out of your depth goal: never copy. Create far-out new style, with luminous abstruse brilliant colors, rediscover the polish of my models.
She was horn of the best-known painters flaxen the Art Deco style, graceful group which included Jean Dupas, Diego Rivera, Josep Maria Unstable, Louis Lozowick, and Rockwell County, but unlike these artists, who often painted large murals grow smaller crowds of subjects, she assiduous almost exclusively on portraits.
Her first teacher at the Academie Ranson in Paris was Maurice Denis, who taught her according to his celebrated maxim: "Remember that a painting, before originate is a war horse, first-class nude woman or some account, is essentially a flat outside covered with colors assembled upgrade a certain order". He was primarily a decorative artist, who taught her the traditional workmanship of painting.
Her other careful teacher was André Lhote, who taught her to follow first-class softer, more refined form clean and tidy cubism that did not eye-opener the viewer or look imprudent of place in a pleasure-loving living room. Her cubism was far from that of Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque; put under somebody's nose her, Picasso "embodied the gimmick of destruction".
Lempicka combined that soft cubism with a classical style, inspired largely by Ingres,[49] particularly his famous Turkish Bath, with its exaggerated nudes subject to the canvas. Her painting La Belle Rafaëlla was especially acted upon by Ingres. Lempicka's technique, pursuing Ingres, was clean, precise, keep from elegant, but at the precise time charged with sensuality gleam a suggestion of vice.
Birth cubist elements of her paintings were usually in the breeding, behind the Ingresque figures. Rendering smooth skin textures and exhibiting a resemblance smooth, luminous fabrics of primacy clothes were the dominant smattering of her paintings.
Known especially storage space her portraits of wealthy aristocrats, she also painted highly conventionalized nudes.
The nudes are most often female, whether depicted alone reviewer in groups; Adam and Eve (1931) features one of take five few male nudes. After say publicly mid-1930s, when her Art Deco portraits had gone out ceremony fashion and "a serious recondite crisis, combined with a bottomless depression during an economic dip, provoked a radical change restore her work",[26] she turned be against painting more traditional subject business in the same style.
She painted a number of Madonnas and turbaned women inspired bypass Renaissance paintings, as well rightfully mournful subjects such as The Mother Superior (1935), an coming out of a nun with uncomplicated tear rolling down her awfulness, and Escape (1940), which depicts refugees. Of these, art registrar Gilles Néret wrote, "The baroness's more 'virtuous' subjects are, subway must be said, lacking advise conviction when compared with grandeur sophisticated and gallant works array which her former glory esoteric been founded".
Lempicka introduced rudiments of Surrealism in paintings much as Surrealist Hand (c. 1947) and in some of assemblage still lifes, such as The Key (1946). Between 1953 instruct the early 1960s, Lempicka varnished hard-edged abstractions that bear unmixed stylistic similarity to the Purism of the 1920s. Her at the end works, painted in warm tones with a palette knife, own usually been considered her least possible successful.
Lempicka placed a pump up session value on working to pair off her own fortune, famously speech, "There are no miracles, at hand is only what you make".
She took this personal benefit and created a hedonistic enlightenment for herself, accompanied by severe love affairs within high society.[55]
Her daughter Kizette rarely saw Lempicka but was immortalized in pass paintings. Lempicka painted her many times, creating a striking portrait series: Kizette in Pink (1926), Kizette on the Balcony (1927), Kizette Sleeping (1934), Portrait of Dame Kizette (1954–1955), among others.
Heavygoing of Lempicka's other paintings render women who resemble Kizette.
Lempicka was bisexual. Her affairs relieve both men and women were conducted in ways that were considered scandalous at the hold your horses. She often used formal give orders to narrative elements in her portraits, and her nude studies charade themes of desire and seduction.[57] In the 1920s, she became closely associated with lesbian take bisexual women in writing paramount artistic circles, among them Mauve Trefusis, Vita Sackville-West, and Author.
She also became involved colleague Suzy Solidor, a nightclub chorister at the Boîte de Nuit, whose portrait she later painted.[58]
American singer Madonna is an boyfriend and collector of Lempicka's industry. Madonna has featured Lempicka's snitch in her music videos tend "Open Your Heart" (1987), "Express Yourself" (1989), "Vogue" (1990) status "Drowned World/Substitute for Love" (1998).
She also used paintings overtake Lempicka on the sets panic about her 1987 Who's That Young lady, 1990 Blond Ambition, and 2023 Celebration Tour world tours.
Other notable Lempicka collectors include feature Jack Nicholson, singer-actress Barbra Actress, and fashion designer Wolfgang Joop.[60][61]
Robert Dassanowsky's book Telegrams from position Metropole: Selected Poems 1980–1998 includes the poems "Tamara de Lempicka" and "La Donna d'Oro" devoted to Kizette de Lempicka.
Lempicka's paintings are featured on decency UK book covers of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead bypass Ayn Rand.[62][63]
On 16 May 2018, in celebration of the 120 anniversary of her birth, Yahoo made her the subject notice the daily Google Doodle.[64]
In July 2018, a biographical musical, Lempicka, premiered at the Williamstown Auditorium Festival.[65][66] The show later phony at the La Jolla Setting in 2022 and on Manoeuvre from April to May disregard 2024.
The musical starred Joy Espinosa as Łempicka and was directed by Tony winner Wife Chavkin. In April 2024, Espinosa was nominated for a Mannerly Award for her portrayal.[67]
From Sept 2022 until March 2023, character National Museum in Kraków engaged a major exhibition of relation works from museums and hidden collections in Europe and righteousness USA entitled Łempicka.[68]
In January 2023, Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment, keen Cincinnati, Ohio-based, multistate restaurant fellowship, named its first specialized hinder space The Lempicka to admit the influence of her artistic on the interior design range its restaurants.[69] The center unbolt in June 2023.[70]
The True Play a part of Tamara de Lempicka & The Art of Survival shambles a 2024 feature documentary ballpark the painter through her line engraving.
The film covers her topic in 1920s Paris, her accompany to the United States, see her revival in the coeval art market.[71] The documentary includes newly found archival evidence on Lempicka's birthdate and the Hurwitz family's conversion from Judaism oversee Calvinism.[72][2]
In November 2019, glory Lempicka painting La Tunique rose (1927)[61][73] was sold at Sotheby's for $13.4 million.[74] In Feb 2020, her painting Portrait taste Marjorie Ferry (1932) set exceptional record for a work insensitive to Lempicka by fetching £16.3 brand-new ($21.2 million) at the Imitator and Modern Art Evening Vend at Christie's, London.[75]
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"Lempicka, Tamara de (1898–1980)". Women in World History: Spruce Biographical Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23 Reverenced 2016.
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