This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Tamara de Lempicka is best known for her Art Deco-styled portraits of
sexy, bedroom-eyed women in stylish dress and haunting poses. Her
clear, strong style, sometimes called Soft Cubism, earned her a place
at the top of the Art-Deco movement.
Her life is a dramatic
story itself. Married twice to wealthy men, she moved from her
native Poland to Russia, and then to Paris. In 1918, she studied
painting at the Academe de la Grand Chaumiere, and was privately
tutored by Maurice Denis. In 1925, she exhibited her works at the
first Art Deco show in Paris.
She moved to America in 1939
with her second husband, Baron Raoul Kuffner. Her works appeared
at many galleries and museums, but her artistic output decreased.
In 1960, she changed her style to abstract art and began creating works
with a palette knife. After her husband died in 1962, she ceased
painting and moved to Mexico.
She was born as Maria Gorska of
well-to-do parents in turn-of-the-century Warsaw, Poland. After
her mother and father divorced, her wealthy grandmother pampered her
with clothes and travel. At age 14, she was sent by her grandmother to
school in Lausanne, Switzerland.
de Lempicka vacationed in St.
Petersburg, Russia with her Aunt Stephanie, and her aunt's millionaire
banker husband. Perhaps her experiences with high living gave the
young girl an idea of what she wanted her future to be. Soon
after Russia and Germany declared war in 1914, she fell in love with a
handsome Warsaw lawyer named Taduesz Lempicki, and they were married in
St. Petersburg, Russia. Her banker uncle provided the dowry, and
Lempicki, who had no money of his own, was no doubt delighted to marry
the beautiful sixteen-year old Tamara.
A year later, the
Bolsheviks arrested Taduesz. Although only seventeen years old,
Tamara pleaded for and ultimately secured her husband's release.
The Lempickis fled to Paris, where she became known as Tamara de
Lempicka.
In Paris, she studied art and became a well-known
portrait painter with a distinctive bold style that epitomizes the cool
modernism of Art Deco. Between the wars, she painted portraits of
writers, entertainers, artists, scientists, industrialists, and many of
Eastern Europe's exiled nobility. Her daughter, Kizette de
Lempica-Foxhall, wrote in her biography of her mother: "She
painted them all, the rich, the successful, the renowned -the
best. And with many she also slept." Tamara's work brought
her critical acclaim, social celebrity and considerable wealth.
At
the threat of a Second World War, she left Paris for America, settling
in Hollywood. There she became an artist of Hollywood stars. She
and her second husband, Baron Raoul Kuffner, one of her earliest and
wealthiest patrons, moved into American film director King Vidor's
former house in Beverly Hills.
In 1943 Tamara and the Baron
relocated to New York, and moved into a stunning apartment on East 57th
Street, where she continued painting in her trademark style for another
year or two. Tamara decorated the apartment with the antiques she
and the Baron had rescued from his Hungarian estate. When the war
was over, she reopened the studio she had maintained earlier in Paris.
After
the Baron's death in 1962, she moved to Houston to be near her
daughter, Kizette. She began painting in a new style with a
palette knife rather than a brush. These paintings were not well
received, and she swore she would never exhibit her work again.
The
advent of Abstract Expressionism and her advancing age slowed her
career, but she continued to paint, storing her canvases, new and old,
in an attic and a warehouse.
In 1966, the Musee des Arts
Decoratifs mounted a commemorative exhibition in Paris called "Les
Annees '25". Its success created the first serious interest in
Art Deco. This inspired a young man named Alain Blondel to open
the Galerie du Luxembourg and launch a major retrospective of Tamara de
Lempicka. Her work was a revelation in the art world.
Gradually, as Art Deco and figurative painting came into favor again,
Tamara was rediscovered by the art world.
In 1978 she moved to
Mexico permanently, buying a house in Cuernavaca called 'Tres Bambus',
not far from Mexico City. Tamara de Lempicka died in her sleep on
March 18, 1980 with her daughter Kizette at her side. According
to her wishes, her ashes were scattered on the top of the volcano
Popocatepetl.
Source:
wikipedia.org; goodart.org
http://home.swipnet.
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  The following was written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California:
The artist was born Tamara Gorska in Warsaw around the turn of the century, the precise date is uncertain. She summered in St. Petersburg and married a well-to-do Russian lawyer, Tadeusz de Lempicki in 1916. Two years later the couple fled the Bolshevik Revolution for Paris. There they moved into the circle of exiled Russian nobility and other out-of-work aristocrats. It was there that De Lempicka took up painting. The teacher who had the greatest influence on her was Andre LHote, who sought to apply the principles of Cubism in traditional subjects such as landscapes, nudes and portraits.
Seriously ambitious in her art, tall blond De Lempicka managed to turn her headlong lifestyle into a business asset. Her notoriety attracted clients, clients became patrons, and lovers. And there were countless lovers, male and female. The Lempickis had one daughter, Kizette, who was later to co-author a biography of her.
Tadeusz de Lempicki divorced her in 1928. She painted a portrait of him that year, leaving unfinished the left hand which would have carried the wedding band. In 1933 she married Baron Raoul Kuffner on the understanding that she could continue to live as she pleased. De Lempicka flourished through the Depression, but in 1939, she and Kuffner left for the United States, eventually landing in Beverly Hills. Her reputation faded; they moved to New York, then Houston and finally Cuernavaca, Mexico. She died there in 1980.
Art scholars and critics are divided on De Lempicka. Many regard her as an artist who merely reflected her times rather than helped to define them. Her best work has been described as striking and seductive; her late work "barely this side of paintings on black velvet."
Sources include:
Craig Turner in the LA Times, September 23, 1994
Peter Plagens with Yahlin Chang in Newsweek, July 4, 1994
From the Internet: Electric Library.
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Tamara De Lempicka is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Art Deco
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