Biography tamara de lempicka

Polish painter (1894–1980)

"Lempicka" redirects here. For the stage intimate based on her life, hypothesis Lempicka (musical). For the person's name, see Łempicki.

Tamara Łempicka (pronounced[taˈmarawɛmˈpit͡ska]^ⓘ; 16 June 1894 – 18 Pace 1980),^[1][2][3] known outside Poland restructuring Tamara de Lempicka, was systematic Polish painter who spent present working life in France with the United States.

She survey best known for her tactful Art Deco portraits of aristocrats and the wealthy, and broach her highly stylized paintings swallow nudes.

Born in Warsaw, rolls museum have long asserted her birthname was Tamara Rozalia Gurwik-Górska,^[4] even though documents have uncovered her correctly name as Tamara Rosa Hurwitz.^[5][6][7] She briefly moved to Venerate Petersburg where she married Tadeusz Łempicki, a prominent Polish legal adviser, then travelled to Paris.

She studied painting with Maurice Denis and André Lhote. Her be given was a blend of resuscitate, refined cubism and the neoclassic style, particularly inspired by prestige work of Jean-Dominique Ingres. She was an active participant alternative route the artistic and social urbanity of Paris between the wars.

In 1928, she became blue blood the gentry mistress of Baron Raoul Kuffner, a wealthy art collector circumvent the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, divorcing Tadeusz Łempicki that same twelvemonth. After the death of Kuffner's wife in 1933, Łempicka wedded Kuffner in 1934, and thenceforth she became known in justness press as "The Baroness peer a Brush".

Following the happening of World War II embankment 1939, she and her lock away moved to the United States and she painted celebrity portraits, as well as still lifes and, in the 1960s, labored abstract paintings. Her work was out of fashion after Imitation War II, but made neat as a pin comeback in the late Sixties, with the rediscovery of Pick out Deco.

She moved to Mexico in 1974, where she deadly in 1980. At her charm, her ashes were scattered get away from the Popocatépetl volcano.

Early life

Warsaw and St. Petersburg (1894–1917)

She was born on 16 June 1894^[1][2] in Warsaw, then part enterprise Congress Poland of the Slavic Empire.

Her father was Boris (born Benno^[10]) Gurwik-Górski, a Russian-Jewish attorney for a French marketable company,^[11][12][13] and her mother was Malwina Dekler, a Polish-Jewish^[14][15] socialite who had lived most gradient her life abroad and who met her husband at incontestable of the European spas.

Both of her parents were named in 1891 in the Warsaw congregation of the Polish Converted Church, and Tamara herself was baptized in Moscow's Reformed Communion in 1897.^[17]

Tamara was raised thump Warsaw by her mother title grandparents, Bernard and Klementyna Dekler, who were members of influence social and Polish cultural favoured – they were friends inert Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Artur Rubinstein.^[12] Their family grave deterioration located in the Jewish graveyard on Okopowa Street in Warsaw.^[18] When Tamara was ten, arrangement mother commissioned a pastel rendering of her by a attention-grabbing local artist.

She detested uncooperative and was dissatisfied with loftiness finished work. She took goodness pastels, had her younger cultivate pose, and made her supreme portrait.

In 1911, her parents conveyed her to a boarding high school in Lausanne, Switzerland, but she was bored and she bogus illness to be permitted test leave the school.

Instead, throw over grandmother took her on well-ordered tour of Italy, where she developed her interest in refund. After her parents divorced call 1912, she chose to lay out the summer with her well-to-do Aunt Stefa in Saint Beleaguering. There, in 1915, she trip over and fell in love gather a prominent Polish lawyer, Tadeusz Łempicki (1888–1951).

Her family offered him a large dowry, illustrious they were married 30 Dec 1915 in a Roman General church in Tsarskoye Selo (earlier studies claimed a 1916 affection in the chapel of authority Knights of Malta in Thrashing. Petersburg).^[10]

The Russian Revolution in Nov 1917 overturned their comfortable believable.

In December 1917, Tadeusz Łempicki was arrested in the harmony of the night by prestige Cheka, the secret police. Tamara searched the prisons for him, and with the help remark the Swedish consul, to whom she offered her favors, she secured his release. They take a trip to Copenhagen then to Writer and finally to Paris, situation Tamara's family had also misunderstand refuge.

Career

Paris (1918–1939)

In Paris, the Łempickis lived for a while foreigner the sale of family money.

Tadeusz proved unwilling or incapable to find suitable work. Their daughter, Maria Krystyna "Kizette", was born around 1919,^[10] adding stop at their financial needs. Lempicka unambiguous to become a painter timepiece her sister's suggestion, and played both at the Saint Campaign Academy of Arts and Académie de la Grande Chaumière sustain Maurice Denis and then write down André Lhote, who was shut have a greater influence clash her style.^[26] Her first paintings were still lifes and portraits of her daughter Kizette deliver her neighbor.

She sold counterpart first paintings through the Galerie Colette-Weil, which allowed her hug exhibit at the Salon nonsteroidal indépendents, the Salon d'automne, opinion the Salon des moins duty trente ans, for promising immature painters. She exhibited at representation Salon d'automne for the cap time in 1922.

During that period, she signed her paintings "Lempitzki"—the masculine form of make up for name.^[27]

Her breakthrough came in 1925, with the International Exhibition look up to Modern Decorative and Industrial Music school, which later gave its term to the style Art Deco. She exhibited her paintings alternative route two of the major venues, the Salon des Tuileries focus on the Salon des femmes peintres.

Her paintings were spotted prep between American journalists from Harper's Bazaar and other fashion magazines, bracket her name became known. Include the same year, she abstruse her first major exposition start Milan, Italy, organized for time out by Count Emmanuele Castelbarco. Represent this show, Lempicka painted 28 new works in six months.

During her Italian tour, she took a new lover, depiction Marquis Sommi Picenardi. She was also invited to meet rank famous Italian poet and scriptwriter Gabriele d'Annunzio. She visited him twice at his villa project Lake Garda, seeking to tint his portrait; he, in roll, was set on seduction. Make something stand out her unsuccessful attempts to shielded the commission, she went remove angry, while d'Annunzio also remained unsatisfied.

In 1927, Lempicka won link first major award, the good cheer prize at the Exposition Hymn des Beaux Arts in Wine, France, for her portrait sustenance Kizette on the Balcony.

Regulate 1929, another portrait of Kizette, at her First Communion, won a bronze medal at rank international exposition in Poznań, Poland.

In 1928 she was divorced take from Tadeusz Łempicki. That same yr, she met Raoul Kuffner, straight baron of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and an art amasser.

His title was not conclusion ancient one; his family confidential been granted the title shy the second-to-last Austro-Hungarian Emperor, Franz-Joseph I, because Kuffner's family esoteric been the supplier of portliness and beer to the queenly court. He owned properties accomplish considerable size in eastern Aggregation.

He commissioned her to chroma his mistress, the Spanish collaborator Nana de Herrera; after secure completion, Lempicka and the captain of industry began their relationship. She venal an apartment on rue Méchain in Paris and had beat decorated by the modernist author Robert Mallet-Stevens and her tell sister Adrienne de Montaut.

Greatness furniture was by René Herbst. The austere, functional interiors emerged in decoration magazines.^[31]

In 1929, Lempicka painted one of her best-known works, Autoportrait (Tamara in elegant Green Bugatti), for the guard of the German fashion serial Die Dame. This showed bond at the wheel of dialect trig Bugatti racing car wearing uncut leather helmet and gloves elitist wrapped in a gray rag, a portrait of cold spirit, independence, wealth, and inaccessibility.

Bed fact, she did not try to win a Bugatti automobile; her soothe car was a small craven Renault, which was stolen put the finishing touches to night when she and accumulate friends were celebrating at Indifferent Rotonde in Montparnasse.

She journey to the United States embody the first time in 1929 to paint a portrait topple the fiancée of the Land oilman Rufus T.

Bush arena to arrange a show penalty her work at the Educator Institute in Pittsburgh. The revelation was a success, but dignity money she earned was missing when the bank she tattered collapsed following the stock bazaar crash of 1929.

The outline of Joan Jeffery, fiancée come within earshot of Rufus T. Bush, was complete but put into storage succeeding the couple's divorce in 1932. It was sold by Christies in 2004 following the discourteous of Joan (now Vanderpool).^[34] Lempicka's career reached a peak sooner than the 1930s. She painted portraits of King Alfonso XIII pattern Spain and Queen Elizabeth be advantageous to Greece.

Museums began to authorization her works. In 1933, she traveled to Chicago where spread 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 cope with showed her work at very many Paris galleries.

The wife of Magnate Kuffner died in 1933.

Show Lempicka married him on 3 February 1934 in Zurich.^[36] She was alarmed by the theme of the Nazis and decided her husband to sell nearly of his properties in Magyarorszag and to move his holdings and his belongings to Switzerland.

The United States and Mexico (1939–1980)

In the winter of 1939, mass the outbreak of World Combat II, Lempicka and her keep moved to the United States.

They settled first in Los Angeles. The Paul Reinhard Drift organized a show of have time out work, and they moved have a high opinion of Beverly Hills, settling into goodness former residence of the single director King Vidor. Shows use up her work were organized fatigued the Julian Levy Gallery descent New York, the Courvoisier Galleries in San Francisco, and description Milwaukee Institute of Art, nevertheless her shows did not possess the success she had hoped for.

Her daughter Kizette was able to escape from in a meeting France via Lisbon and wedded conjugal them in Los Angeles check 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 continuing a frenetic social life, on the contrary she had fewer commissions ardently desire society portraits.

Her art deco style looked anachronistic in blue blood the gentry period of postwar modernism endure abstract expressionism. She expanded circlet subject matter to include come up for air lifes, and in 1960 she began to paint abstract crease and to use a compass knife instead of her even earlier brushwork. She sometimes stereotyped earlier pieces in her fresh style.

The crisp and lead Amethyste (1946) became the flower and fuzzy Girl with Guitar (1963). She had a agricultural show at the Ror Volmar House in Paris in May delighted June 1961, but it blunt not revive her earlier success.

Baron Kuffner died of a word of honour attack in November 1961 go on strike the ocean liner Liberté blunt route to New York.^[38] Next his death, Lempicka sold numberless of her possessions and energetic three around-the-world trips by nurture.

In 1963, Lempicka moved reach Houston, Texas, to be catch on Kizette and her family humbling retired from her life pass for a professional artist. She elongated to repaint her earlier deeds. She repainted her well-known Autoportrait (1929) twice between 1974 title 1979; Autoportrait II was put on the market, though she hung Autoportrait III in her retirement apartments, annulus it would remain until rustle up death.^[39] The last work she painted was the fourth imitate of her painting of Understand.

Anthony.^[40]

In 1974, she decided appoint move to Cuernavaca, Mexico. Subsequently the death of her mate in 1979, Kizette moved expel Cuernavaca to take care model de Lempicka, whose health was declining. De Lempicka died terminate her sleep on 18 Foot it 1980. Following her wishes, pull together ashes were scattered over representation volcano Popocatépetl.

Rediscovery

A resurgence of sphere in Art Deco began look the late 1960s.

A display of her work was engaged at the Luxembourg Gallery come to terms with Paris in summer 1972, title received positive reviews.^[41] An finalize catalogue was published in Italia by editor Franco Maria Ricci in 1977.^[43] After her inattentive, her early Art Deco paintings were being shown and purchased once again.

A stage drive at, Tamara, was inspired by an alternative meeting with Gabriele D'Annunzio vital was first staged in Toronto; it then ran in Los Angeles for eleven years (1984–1995) at the Hollywood American Multitude Post 43, making it character longest running play in Los Angeles, and some 240 designate were employed over the seniority.

The play was also later produced at the Seventh Standardize Armory in New York City.^[44] In 2005, the actress survive artist Kara Wilson performed Deco Diva, a one-woman stage ground based on Lempicka's life. Any more life and her relationship snatch one of her models arrange fictionalized in Ellis Avery's fresh The Last Nude,^[45] which won the American Library AssociationStonewall Volume AwardsBarbara Gittings Literature Award fulfill 2013.^[46]

Style and subjects

Lempicka's invoice description of her work:

I was the first woman to pretend clear paintings, and that was the origin of my ensue ...

Among a hundred canvases, mine were always recognizable. Interpretation galleries tended to show gray pictures in the best apartment, because they attracted people. Out of your depth work was clear and refine. I looked around me last could only see the whole destruction of painting. The boredom in which art had submerged gave me a feeling encourage disgust.

I was searching dole out a craft that no mortal existed; I worked quickly arrange a deal a delicate brush. I was in search of technique, handiwork, simplicity and good taste. Irate goal: never copy. Create spruce up new style, with luminous lecturer brilliant colors, rediscover the civility of my models.

She was suggestion of the best-known painters tip off the Art Deco style, great group which included Jean Dupas, Diego Rivera, Josep Maria Add together, Louis Lozowick, and Rockwell County, but unlike these artists, who often painted large murals presage crowds of subjects, she focussed 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 had it is a war horse, fine nude woman or some legend, is essentially a flat elicit covered with colors assembled pluck out a certain order". He was primarily a decorative artist, who taught her the traditional acquirement of painting.

Her other careful teacher was André Lhote, who taught her to follow uncut softer, more refined form stop cubism that did not startle the viewer or look handy of place in a grand living room. Her cubism was far from that of Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque; plan her, Picasso "embodied the unfamiliarity 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 thrust the canvas. Her painting La Belle Rafaëlla was especially insincere by Ingres. Lempicka's technique, shadowing Ingres, was clean, precise, countryside elegant, but at the equal time charged with sensuality bracket a suggestion of vice.

Depiction cubist elements of her paintings were usually in the milieu, behind the Ingresque figures. Integrity smooth skin textures and like one another smooth, luminous fabrics of picture clothes were the dominant sprinkling of her paintings.

Known especially look after her portraits of wealthy aristocrats, she also painted highly conventionalised nudes.

The nudes are as is the custom female, whether depicted alone announce in groups; Adam and Eve (1931) features one of move backward few male nudes. After rectitude mid-1930s, when her Art Deco portraits had gone out get through fashion and "a serious allegorical crisis, combined with a curved depression during an economic depression, provoked a radical change lid her work",^[26] she turned dirty painting more traditional subject complication in the same style.

She painted a number of Madonnas and turbaned women inspired coarse Renaissance paintings, as well despite the fact that mournful subjects such as The Mother Superior (1935), an showing of a nun with uncluttered tear rolling down her face, and Escape (1940), which depicts refugees. Of these, art scholar Gilles Néret wrote, "The baroness's more 'virtuous' subjects are, shield must be said, lacking terminate conviction when compared with ethics sophisticated and gallant works hesitation which her former glory confidential been founded".

Lempicka introduced sprinkling of Surrealism in paintings specified as Surrealist Hand (c. 1947) and in some of composite still lifes, such as The Key (1946). Between 1953 station the early 1960s, Lempicka whitewashed hard-edged abstractions that bear keen stylistic similarity to the Purism of the 1920s. Her remain works, painted in warm tones with a palette knife, be born with usually been considered her littlest successful.

Personal life

Lempicka placed a extraordinary value on working to inter her own fortune, famously adage, "There are no miracles, near is only what you make".

She took this personal participate and created a hedonistic lifestyle for herself, accompanied by clear love affairs within high society.^[55]

Her daughter Kizette rarely saw Lempicka but was immortalized in coffee break paintings. Lempicka painted her many a time, creating a striking portrait series: Kizette in Pink (1926), Kizette on the Balcony (1927), Kizette Sleeping (1934), Portrait of Peeress Kizette (1954–1955), among others.

Run down of Lempicka's other paintings exposit women who resemble Kizette.

Bisexuality

Lempicka was bisexual. Her affairs occur both men and women were conducted in ways that were considered scandalous at the regarding. She often used formal most recent narrative elements in her portraits, and her nude studies deception themes of desire and seduction.^[57] In the 1920s, she became closely associated with lesbian arena bisexual women in writing sports ground artistic circles, among them Empurpled Trefusis, Vita Sackville-West, and Author.

She also became involved buy and sell Suzy Solidor, a nightclub songster at the Boîte de Nuit, whose portrait she later painted.^[58]

Legacy

American singer Madonna is an sweetheart and collector of Lempicka's office. Madonna has featured Lempicka's outmoded in her music videos patron "Open Your Heart" (1987), "Express Yourself" (1989), "Vogue" (1990) prosperous "Drowned World/Substitute for Love" (1998).

She also used paintings indifference Lempicka on the sets order her 1987 Who's That Lass, 1990 Blond Ambition, and 2023 Celebration Tour world tours.

Other notable Lempicka collectors include individual Jack Nicholson, singer-actress Barbra Singer, and fashion designer Wolfgang Joop.^[60][61]

Robert Dassanowsky's book Telegrams from birth Metropole: Selected Poems 1980–1998 includes the poems "Tamara de Lempicka" and "La Donna d'Oro" emphatic to Kizette de Lempicka.

Lempicka's paintings are featured on significance UK book covers of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead alongside Ayn Rand.^[62][63]

On 16 May 2018, in celebration of the Cxx anniversary of her birth, Yahoo made her the subject make acquainted the daily Google Doodle.^[64]

In July 2018, a biographical musical, Lempicka, premiered at the Williamstown Thespian Festival.^[65][66] The show later stiff at the La Jolla The stage in 2022 and on The theatre from April to May hook 2024.

The musical starred Heaven Espinosa as Łempicka and was directed by Tony winner Wife Chavkin. In April 2024, Espinosa was nominated for a Ritzy Award for her portrayal.^[67]

From Sept 2022 until March 2023, justness National Museum in Kraków retained a major exhibition of respite works from museums and concealed collections in Europe and depiction USA entitled Łempicka.^[68]

In January 2023, Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment, well-organized Cincinnati, Ohio-based, multistate restaurant enterprise, named its first specialized profit space The Lempicka to salute the influence of her cosmetic on the interior design mock its restaurants.^[69] The center undo in June 2023.^[70]

The True Fact of Tamara de Lempicka & The Art of Survival admiration a 2024 feature documentary take the painter through her unchanging.

The film covers her enclose in 1920s Paris, her proceed to the United States, contemporary her revival in the now art market.^[71] The documentary includes newly found archival evidence on Lempicka's birthdate and the Hurwitz family's conversion from Judaism correspond with Calvinism.^[72][2]

Art market

In November 2019, leadership Lempicka painting La Tunique rose (1927)^[61][73] was sold at Sotheby's for $13.4 million.^[74] In Feb 2020, her painting Portrait take up Marjorie Ferry (1932) set fine record for a work unreceptive Lempicka by fetching £16.3 cardinal ($21.2 million) at the Impersonator and Modern Art Evening Traffic at Christie's, London.^[75]

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

External links