Tamara de Lempicka
1898-1980
Tamara de Lempicka, noted Art Deco painter, was born Maria Górska in Moscow, to wealthy and prominent family of Polish origin. In 1912, she became determined to break away to a life of her own and she married a lawyer named Tadeusz.
In 1917, during the Russian Revolution, the Lempickis fled to Paris, where Maria named herself Tamara de Lempicka. She soon began to study art under Maurice Denis and André Lhote and developed a distinctive and bold style sometimes referred to as "soft cubism", which epitomizes the cool modernism of Art Deco.
For her first major show, in Milan in 1925, she painted 28 new works in six months. She was soon the most fashionable portrait painter of her generation, painting duchesses and grand dukes and socialites. She travelled to the United States to paint a commissioned portrait and to arrange shows.
Tamara led the bohemian and scandalous life. Her marriage was torn and unhappy. Her husband eventually tired, abandoned her, and they were divorced in 1928. Obsessed with her work and her social life, De Lempicka continued both her heavy workload and her frenetic social life through the next decade.
She remarried and moved to the United States to make a hit in Hollywood. After adopting a new style and not well-received show in 1962, she determined never to show her work again, and retired from active life as a professional artist.
De Lempicka lived long enough, for the wheel of fashion to turn a full circle: before she died a new generation discovered her art and greeted it with enthusiasm. A 1973 retrospective drew positive responses. At the time of her death, her early Art Deco paintings were being shown and purchased once again.
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