Born: May 16, 1898 in Warsaw, Russian partition of Poland
Died: March 18, 1980, in Cuernavaca, Mexico
Early days. Her father was Boris Gurwik-Gorski, a lawyer, and her mother, Malwina Decler, a socialite. Maria had two siblings named Stanczyk and Adrienne. She attended boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland, and spent the winter of 1911 with her grandmother in Italy and the French Riviera, where she was treated to her first taste of the Great Masters of Italian painting. In 1912, her parents divorced and Maria went to live with her wealthy aunt Stefa in St. Petersburg, Russia. When her mother remarried, Maria became determined to break away to a life of her own. In 1916 she married in St. Petersburg Tadeusz Lempicki a lawyer by title. In 1917, during the Russian Revolution, Tadeusz was arrested by the Bolsheviks. Maria, with the help of the Swedish consul, secured his release. They traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark then London, England and finally to Paris.
Paris and painting. In Paris, the Lempickis lived for a while from the sale of family jewels. Tadeusz proved unable to find suitable work, which added to the domestic strain, while Maria gave birth to her daughter Kizette. De Lempicka took her first painting lesson from Maurice Denis at the Acad�mie Ranson. Denis. De Lempicka's second teacher, Andre� Lhote, had the most influence on her spare, simple Art Deco style. Lhote taught de Lempicka how to modify Cubism by retaining "its commercially acceptable aspects but leaving forms of objects intact" Lhote taught de Lempicka how to modify Cubism by retaining "its commercially acceptable aspects but leaving forms of objects intact". De Lempicka's art combined the styles from her two teachers and she soon became known as one of the best portrait artists in Paris. De Lempicka technique would be novel, clean, precise, and elegant. For her first major show, in Milan, Italy in 1925, she painted 28 new works in six months. In 1925, de Lempicka established her reputation as a leading Art Deco artist at the Exposition Internationale des Artes D�coratifs et Industriels Moderne, which was the first Art Deco exhibition in Paris. From that moment on, her career as an artist took off. She painted portraits of the people she associated herself with: the rich, the famous, the elite. Galleries began to hang her work in their best rooms and critics raved over her erotic portraits. She was soon the most fashionable portrait painter of her generation among the haute bourgeoisie and aristocracy, painting duchesses and grand dukes and socialites. Through her network of friends, she was able to display her paintings in the most elite salons of the era. De Lempicka was criticized and admired; by 1927-8 she could charge 50,000 French francs per portrait (a sum equal to about US$2,000 then). In 1929, she painted her iconic work Auto-Portrait (Tamara in the Green Bugatti) for the cover of the German fashion magazine Die Dame. In 1927 she won first prize at the Exposition Internationale de Beaux Arts in Bordeaux, France for her portrait of Kizette on the Balcony. During the 20s, she was part of the bohemian life: she knew Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and Andr� Gide. She was bisexual, and her affairs with both men and women were carried out in ways that were scandalous at the time. She often used formal and narrative elements in her portraits and nude studies to produce overpowering effects of desire and seduction. In the 1920s she became closely associated with lesbian and bisexual women in writing and artistic circles. Her husband eventually tired of the arrangement abandoned her in 1927, and they were divorced in 1928. Obsessed with her work and her social life, de Lempicka neglected also her daughter. When Kizette was not away at boarding school (France or England), the girl was often with her grandmother Malvina. When de Lempicka informed her mother and daughter that she would not be returning from America for Christmas in 1929, Malvina was so angry that she burned de Lempicka's enormous collection of designer hats. Kizette was neglected, but also immortalized. De Lempicka painted her only child repeatedly, leaving a striking portrait series: Kizette in Pink, 1926; Kizette on the Balcony, 1927; Kizette Sleeping, 1934; Portrait of Baroness Kizette, 1954-5, etc. In other paintings, the women depicted tend to resemble Kizette. In 1927, she won first prize at the Exposition Internationale des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux for a painting of her daughter entitled Kizette on the Balcony. In 1931, she won a bronze medal at the Exposition Internationale in Poznan, Poland, for another portrait of her daughter, Kizette's First Communion. In 1928, her long time patron the baron Raoul Kuffner visited her studio and commissioned her to paint his mistress. De Lempicka finished the portrait, then took the mistress' place in the baron's life. She travelled to the United States for the first time in 1929, to paint a commissioned portrait. De Lempicka continued both her heavy workload and her frenetic social life through the next decade. She was so popular, that wealthy people and royalty would stand in line to have the honor of their portrait being painted by the famous Tamara de Lempicka. The Great Depression had little effect on her; in the early 1930s she was painting King Alfonso XIII of Spain and Queen Elizabeth of Greece. Museums began to collect her works. In 1933 she traveled to Chicago where she worked with Georgia O'Keeffe, Santiago Mart�nez Delgado and Willem de Kooning. Her social position was cemented when she married her lover, baron Kuffner, in 1933. She did make a few concessions to the changing times as the decade passed; her art featured a few refugees and common people, and even a Christian saint or two, as well as the usual aristocrats and cold nudes.
Later life. In the winter of 1939, Tamara and the baron started an "extended vacation" in the United States. They settled in Beverly Hills, California. She became 'the baroness with a brush' and a favorite artist of Hollywood stars. Soon, de Lempicka became friends with such Hollywood stars as Dolores del Rio, Tyrone Power, and George Sanders. They gave her a nickname: "The Baroness with a Brush." She did war relief work and she managed to get Kizette out of Nazi-occupied Paris, via Lisbon, in 1941. Some of her paintings of this time had a Salvador Dal� quality, as displayed in Key and Hand, 1941. In 1943, the couple relocated to New York City. Her popularity as a society painter had diminished greatly. They traveled to Europe frequently to visit fashionable spas and so that the baron could attend to Hungarian refugee work. For a while, she continued to paint in her trademark style�but she expanded her subject matter, painted still lifes, and even some abstracts. Her new work was not well-received when she exhibited in 1962 at the Iolas Gallery. De Lempicka determined never to show her work again, and retired from active life as a professional artist. After baron Kuffner's death from a heart attack in 1962, she sold most of her possessions and made three around-the-world trips by ship. Finally she moved to Houston, Texas to be with Kizette and her family. There she began her difficult and disagreeable later years. Kizette served as Tamara's business manager, social secretary, and factotum, and suffered under her mother's controlling domination and petulant behavior. The artistry and craftsmanship of her glory days were unrecoverable. In 1978 Tamara moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, to live among an aging international set and some of the younger aristocrats. After Kizette's husband died of cancer, she attended her mother for three months until Tamara died in her sleep on March 19, 1980. Before she died a new generation discovered her art and greeted it with enthusiasm. A 1973 retrospective in the Galerie du Luxembourg drew positive responses. At the time of her death, her early Art Deco paintings were being shown and purchased once again. A stage play inspired in part by her life ("Tamara") ran first in Toronto, then for two years in Los Angeles (1984-1986) and subsequently in New York City. In 2005, actress and artist Kara Wilson performed Deco Diva, a one-woman stage play based on de Lempicka's life. Another homage to Tamara is seen in TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In 5th season, the arch-villain Glory has a copy of Tamara de Lempicka's Irene and her sisters a.k.a. Four nudes in her living room.
Collectors. American singer-songwriter and actress, Madonna, is a huge fan and collector of her work Other famous collectors include actor Jack Nicholson and singer-actress Barbara Streisand.
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