Madonna will showcase Lempicka’s art on her Celebration Concert Tour, Lempicka The Musical on Broadway in Mar 2024. An exhibition at San Francisco’s Legion of Honour Museum will reevaluate her style in art history by introducing 1920-30s Paris culture. And a documentary The True Story of Tamara De Lempicka & the Art of Survival will appear in 2024! What a year!!
Portrait Of Dr Boucard 1929
with test tube and microscope.
Maria Gorzka (1898-1980) was born in ?Moscow, daughter of a Russian Jewish solicitor for a French trading company, Boris Górski. After her parents divorced, Maria lived with grandma on the French Riviera. In a St Petersburg opera in 1914, Maria met Tadeusz Lempicki (1888–1951), a handsome lawyer of noble family. 2 years later they married in St Petersburg with her banker-uncle giving the dowry. A year later Taduesz was arrested by the Bolsheviks; Tamara got him freed and the couple and baby fled to Paris, with other wealthy White Russians.
Madame Boucard in lavish silk, jewels and mink
1931
In her early Paris life, she enrolled at Académie de la Grande Chaumière and absorbed the Old Masters, especially Bronzino. She drew on the Cubism of her Paris contemporaries and French Deco created a glamorous Paris epitomising Tamara's life and art. Her mentor was artist-critic André Lhote, creator of a gently coloured Cubism.
Deco made great progress in fine arts and industrial designs, based on simple format, clean lines and vivid colours. The improvement of technology, in industries like cars, ships and trains, emphasised stylised angular forms. Lempicka found soul mates in fashion illustrator Erte, glass artist Rene Lalique and designer Cassandre. Lempicka found her place as a portraitist of the era's beautiful people, mixing with André Gide, Colette and Jean Cocteau. Although married with a daughter, Tamara was busy having romantic involvements with both genders, patrons and models. And because tourism was making Montmartre too crowded and expensive, most artists gradually moved to Montparnasse with its wide boulevards and small courtyards. Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, Jacques Lipchitz, Tristan Tzara& Piet Mondrian were Tamara's neighbours in this centre of art studios.
Deco made great progress in fine arts and industrial designs, based on simple format, clean lines and vivid colours. The improvement of technology, in industries like cars, ships and trains, emphasised stylised angular forms. Lempicka found soul mates in fashion illustrator Erte, glass artist Rene Lalique and designer Cassandre. Lempicka found her place as a portraitist of the era's beautiful people, mixing with André Gide, Colette and Jean Cocteau. Although married with a daughter, Tamara was busy having romantic involvements with both genders, patrons and models. And because tourism was making Montmartre too crowded and expensive, most artists gradually moved to Montparnasse with its wide boulevards and small courtyards. Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, Jacques Lipchitz, Tristan Tzara& Piet Mondrian were Tamara's neighbours in this centre of art studios.
By 1923 she exhibited in small galleries. Her work was shown at the 1924 Paris Salon des Femmes Artistes Modernes, and in 1925 she had her first Milan solo. Her social life also blossomed, displaying Tamara’s skill in winning many men and women lovers, her models and patrons. See the women reclining, bathing, hugging or stroking.
Encouraged by Coco Chanel and the Flappers, Tamara went to chaperone-free parties, smoked and drove cars. The 1920s flat dresses provided an ideal canvas to display Deco taste. In 1927 Lempicka received 1st prize at the Exposition Internationale des Beaux-Arts for the portrait of her daughter Kizette on the Balcony, and divorced.
The Girl In Green With Gloves (1929 Musée National d'Art Moderne Paris) was a famous work that clearly epitomised Deco and flowing curves. See the self-portrait Tamara in the Green Bugatti (1929), in leather helmet and gloves. It was the cover of a German Women's Liberation magazine Die Dame: tight, post-cubist design; muted colour; speed; glamour; Hermès helmet; leather driving gloves! F Scott Fitzgerald popularised sporty outfits; and clothes and hats were designed for ships, trains or cars. Jean Patou, Madeleine Vionnet and Elsa Schiaparelli created excellent moving styles.
Examine Lempicka's males. The huge portrait of Duke Gabriel Constantinovich (1926) wore a gold-braided uniform and empty face. Count Fürstenberg Herdringen 1928 was a glass-eyed monster in a French navy beret. In the late 1920s her most important patron was flashy medico Dr Pierre Boucard (1929) who already owned some Lempicka nudes. Boucard gave her a 2-year contract to paint family portraits.
This new income bought a Left Bank 3-sorey studio house in Rue Mechain; grey interior, chrome fittings & American cocktail bar gave Lempicka her setting. On the easel was the portrait of Madame Boucard (1931), a complex work done by this connoisseur of textiles, jewels, hairstyles and mink boa. In Portrait of Madame M 1931, Tamara showed sleekness .
Tamara sold her expensive portraits to Paris’ rich aristocracy. She painted writers, entertainers, artists and Eastern Europe's exiled nobility. One of her wealthiest patrons Baron Raoul Kuffner (1886–1961) owned vast estates donated to his brewer family by Emperor Franz-Josef for supplying the Hapsburg court. Kuffner asked Tamara to paint a portrait of his mistress Andalusian dancer Nana de Herrera but while painting the Baron’s portrait, Lempicka got involved with him, replaced his mistress and married him in 1934
La Musicienne 1929
Lempicka understood political chaos, and encouraged her husband to secure his assets. So Kuffner sold his Hungarian estates. When WW2 started in 1939, the couple left Paris and moved to Hollywood. They lived in film director King Vidor’s old home, and Tamara soon became an artist of Hollywood's screen stars. Lempicka also busied herself with war relief work and after an extended struggle, rescued her daughter Kizette from Nazi-occupied Paris in 1941. In 1943 they continued to socialise in N.Y, although her art output reduced; conservatism started to challenge the feminist advances she’d championed. Nonetheless when WW2 ended, she reopened her famous Paris studio.
When the Baron died in 1961, Tamara sold up and sailed away. Then she moved to Houston Tx to be closer to her daughter and produced abstract paintings to remain in-step with current art. Only in 1966 did Musee des Arts Decoratifs open her memorial exhibition, then Alain Blondel opened Galerie du Luxembourg with a major Lempicka retrospective in 1972. But in 1978 she moved to Mexico, bought a special house and died in 1980.
Madame M sold for $6.13 million at Christie's NY in 2009. Lempicka's auction record, $9.1m, was set by Christie’s in 2018 for La Musicienne (1929) showing a mandolin player in vivid blue. A new record was set when La Tunique Rose (1927) earned $13.3m at Sotheby’s N.Y in 2019. Now Portrait de Marjorie Ferry (Paris, 1932) earned £16.4 in Christie’s London in 2020!! Many thanks to theartstory.
stylish Bar Lempicka in Amsterdam
See the Art Deco glass mosaic on the ceiling
and the Lempicka name on the facade