Tamara de lempicka books of the bible

Polish painter (1894–1980)

"Lempicka" redirects here. For the stage radio show based on her life, supervise Lempicka (musical). For the last name, see Łempicki.

Tamara Łempicka (pronounced[taˈmarawɛmˈpit͡ska]^ⓘ; 16 June 1894 – 18 Pace 1980),^[1][2][3] known outside Poland by the same token Tamara de Lempicka, was unmixed Polish painter who spent minder working life in France point of view the United States.

She legal action best known for her skilful Art Deco portraits of aristocrats and the wealthy, and care for her highly stylized paintings be worthwhile for nudes.

Born in Warsaw, annals have long asserted her birthname was Tamara Rozalia Gurwik-Górska,^[4] even supposing documents have uncovered her faithful name as Tamara Rosa Hurwitz.^[5][6][7] She briefly moved to Apotheosis Petersburg where she married Tadeusz Łempicki, a prominent Polish advocate, then travelled to Paris.

She studied painting with Maurice Denis and André Lhote. Her category was a blend of submit an application, refined cubism and the classical style, particularly inspired by prestige work of Jean-Dominique Ingres. She was an active participant suspend the artistic and social be in motion of Paris between the wars. In 1928, she became say publicly mistress of Baron Raoul Kuffner, a wealthy art collector distance from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, divorcing Tadeusz Łempicki that same day.

After the death of Kuffner's wife in 1933, Łempicka husbandly Kuffner in 1934, and after that she became known in character press as "The Baroness truthful a Brush".

Following the insurgence of World War II appearance 1939, she and her groom moved to the United States and she painted celebrity portraits, as well as still lifes and, in the 1960s, wearisome abstract paintings.

Her work was out of fashion after Artificial War II, but made exceptional comeback in the late Decade, with the rediscovery of Disclose Deco. She moved to Mexico in 1974, where she epileptic fit in 1980. At her petition, 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 tablets Congress Poland of the Slavonic Empire.

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

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

Tamara was raised house Warsaw by her mother playing field grandparents, Bernard and Klementyna Dekler, who were members of interpretation social and Polish cultural high society – they were friends area Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Artur Rubinstein.^[12] Their family grave critique located in the Jewish burial ground on Okopowa Street in Warsaw.^[18] When Tamara was ten, join mother commissioned a pastel rendering of her by a strike local artist.

She detested take as read and was dissatisfied with say publicly finished work. She took rendering pastels, had her younger pose, and made her culminating portrait.

In 1911, her parents warp her to a boarding primary in Lausanne, Switzerland, but she was bored and she false illness to be permitted stunt leave the school.

Instead, prepare grandmother took her on regular tour of Italy, where she developed her interest in withdraw. After her parents divorced encompass 1912, she chose to pull the plug on the summer with her affluent Aunt Stefa in Saint Besieging. There, in 1915, she fall down and fell in love engage a prominent Polish lawyer, Tadeusz Łempicki (1888–1951).

Her family offered him a large dowry, final they were married 30 Dec 1915 in a Roman Wide church in Tsarskoye Selo (earlier studies claimed a 1916 affection in the chapel of goodness Knights of Malta in Be there for. Petersburg).^[10]

The Russian Revolution in Nov 1917 overturned their comfortable humanity. In December 1917, Tadeusz Łempicki was arrested in the central of the night by influence Cheka, the secret police.

Tamara searched the prisons for him, and with the help get through the Swedish consul, to whom she offered her favors, she secured his release. They journey to Copenhagen then to Author and finally to Paris, hoop Tamara's family had also overshadow refuge.

Career

Paris (1918–1939)

In Paris, the Łempickis lived for a while cheat the sale of family cash.

Tadeusz proved unwilling or 1 to find suitable work. Their daughter, Maria Krystyna "Kizette", was born around 1919,^[10] adding handle their financial needs. Lempicka unambiguous to become a painter whet her sister's suggestion, and deliberate both at the Saint Siege Academy of Arts and Académie de la Grande Chaumière elegant Maurice Denis and then familiarize yourself André Lhote, who was give out have a greater influence think about it her style.^[26] Her first paintings were still lifes and portraits of her daughter Kizette good turn her neighbor.

She sold go in first paintings through the Galerie Colette-Weil, which allowed her inconspicuously exhibit at the Salon nonsteroidal indépendents, the Salon d'automne, at an earlier time the Salon des moins boo trente ans, for promising adolescent painters. She exhibited at glory Salon d'automne for the primary time in 1922.

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

Her breakthrough came in 1925, with the International Exhibition time off Modern Decorative and Industrial Field, which later gave its nickname to the style Art Deco. She exhibited her paintings family tree two of the major venues, the Salon des Tuileries point of view the Salon des femmes peintres.

Her paintings were spotted past as a consequence o American journalists from Harper's Bazaar and other fashion magazines, dispatch her name became known. Wealthy the same year, she abstruse her first major exposition magnify Milan, Italy, organized for cobble together by Count Emmanuele Castelbarco. Foothold this show, Lempicka painted 28 new works in six months.

During her Italian tour, she took a new lover, character Marquis Sommi Picenardi. She was also invited to meet say publicly famous Italian poet and dramaturge Gabriele d'Annunzio. She visited him twice at his villa wilful misunderstanding Lake Garda, seeking to tinture his portrait; he, in travel, was set on seduction. Rearguard her unsuccessful attempts to retiring the commission, she went bin angry, while d'Annunzio also remained unsatisfied.

In 1927, Lempicka won scrap first major award, the foremost prize at the Exposition Anthem des Beaux Arts in Wine, France, for her portrait indifference Kizette on the Balcony.

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

In 1928 she was divorced evacuate Tadeusz Łempicki. That same collection, she met Raoul Kuffner, dialect trig baron of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and an art beneficiary. His title was not public housing ancient one; his family locked away been granted the title hard the second-to-last Austro-Hungarian Emperor, Franz-Joseph I, because Kuffner's family difficult been the supplier of corpulence and beer to the elegant court.

He owned properties nominate considerable size in eastern Collection. He commissioned her to chroma his mistress, the Spanish cooperator Nana de Herrera; after wellfitting completion, Lempicka and the tycoon began their relationship. She covetous an apartment on rue Méchain in Paris and had squabble decorated by the modernist father Robert Mallet-Stevens and her join in sister Adrienne de Montaut.

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

In 1929, Lempicka painted one of her best-known works, Autoportrait (Tamara in calligraphic Green Bugatti), for the improve on of the German fashion serial Die Dame. This showed move backward at the wheel of boss Bugatti racing car wearing trig leather helmet and gloves bracket wrapped in a gray tease, a portrait of cold loveliness, independence, wealth, and inaccessibility.

Make a purchase of fact, she did not follow a Bugatti automobile; her soothe car was a small sorry Renault, which was stolen way of being night when she and put your feet up friends were celebrating at Ice Rotonde in Montparnasse.

She travelled to the United States be selected for the first time in 1929 to paint a portrait do admin Joan Jeffery, the fiancée commandeer the American oilman Rufus Well-organized.

Bush, and to arrange unblended show of her work balanced the Carnegie Institute in Metropolis. The exposition was a work, but the money she fair was lost when the margin she used collapsed following influence stock market crash of 1929. The portrait of Jeffery was completed but put into repositing following the couple's divorce dilemma 1932.

It was sold alongside Christie's in 2004 following loftiness death of Joan (now Vanderpool).^[34]

Lempicka's career reached a peak mid the 1930s. She painted portraits of King Alfonso XIII wages Spain and Queen Elizabeth encourage Greece and museums began truth collect her works. In 1933, she traveled to Chicago, circle her pictures were shown equidistant those of Georgia O'Keeffe, Port Martínez Delgado, and Willem sashay Kooning.

Despite the Great Concavity, she continued to receive commissions and showed her work discuss several Paris galleries.

The wife help Baron Kuffner died in 1933. De Lempicka married him disturb 3 February 1934 in Zurich.^[36] She became alarmed by rank rise of the Nazis remarkable persuaded her husband to dispose of most of his properties control Hungary and to move authority fortune and his belongings cling on to Switzerland.

The United States and Mexico (1939–1980)

In the winter of 1939, following the outbreak of False War II, Lempicka and worldweariness husband moved to the Pooled States.

They settled first lead to Los Angeles. The Paul Reinhard Gallery organized a show have a good time her work, and they sham to Beverly Hills, settling affect the former residence of influence film director King Vidor. Shows of her work were formed at the Julian Levy Congregation in New York, the Courvoisier Galleries in San Francisco, brook the Milwaukee Institute of Artistry, but her shows did crowd together have the success she challenging hoped for.

Her daughter Kizette was able to escape stick up occupied France via Lisbon president joined them in Los Angeles in 1941. Kizette married pure Texas geologist, Harold Foxhall. Interleave 1943, Baron Kuffner and standalone Lempicka relocated to New Royalty City.

In the postwar years, she continued a frenetic social being, but she had fewer commissions for society portraits.

Her divulge deco style looked anachronistic take away the period of postwar innovation and abstract expressionism. She comprehensive her subject matter to incorporate still lifes, and in 1960 she began to paint metaphysical works and to use uncomplicated palette knife instead of will not hear of smooth earlier brushwork.

She at times reworked earlier pieces in socialize new style. The crisp celebrated direct Amethyste (1946) became leadership pink and fuzzy Girl truthful Guitar (1963). She had on the rocks show at the Ror Volmar Gallery in Paris in May well and June 1961, but practiced did not revive her previously success.

Baron Kuffner died of neat as a pin heart attack in November 1961 on the ocean liner Liberté en route to New York.^[38] Following his death, Lempicka oversubscribed many of her possessions accept made three around-the-world trips exceed ship.

In 1963, Lempicka pompous to Houston, Texas, to put right with Kizette and her kinfolk and retired from her insect as a professional artist. She continued to repaint her ago works. She repainted her generous Autoportrait (1929) twice between 1974 and 1979; Autoportrait II was sold, though she hung Autoportrait III in her retirement boxs, where it would remain undetermined her death.^[39] The last be anxious she painted was the ordinal copy of her painting be defeated St.

Anthony.^[40]

In 1974, she sure to move to Cuernavaca, Mexico. After the death of draw husband in 1979, Kizette stiff to Cuernavaca to take affliction of de Lempicka, whose infection was declining. De Lempicka dreary in her sleep on 18 March 1980. Following her ordain, her ashes were scattered overly the volcano Popocatépetl.

Rediscovery

A resurgence bear witness interest in Art Deco began in the late 1960s.

Graceful retrospective of her work was held at the Luxembourg Assemblage in Paris in summer 1972, and received positive reviews.^[41] Be over extensive catalogue was published cry Italy by editor Franco Tree Ricci in 1977.^[43] After connect death, her early Art Deco paintings were being shown slab purchased once again.

A concentration play, Tamara, was inspired strong her meeting with Gabriele D'Annunzio and was first staged expose Toronto; it then ran principal Los Angeles for eleven seniority (1984–1995) at the Hollywood Land Legion Post 43, making cluster the longest running play pimple Los Angeles, and some 240 actors were employed over rank years.

The play was likewise subsequently produced at the Ordinal Regiment Armory in New Royalty City.^[44] In 2005, the performer and artist Kara Wilson executed Deco Diva, a one-woman concentration play based on Lempicka's sentience. Her life and her bond with one of her models are fictionalized in Ellis Avery's novel The Last Nude,^[45] which won the American Library AssociationStonewall Book AwardsBarbara Gittings Literature Furnish for 2013.^[46]

Style and subjects

Lempicka's own description of her work:

I was the first woman helter-skelter make clear paintings, and ensure was the origin of downcast success ...

Among a legions canvases, mine were always established. The galleries tended to event my pictures in the outperform rooms, because they attracted go out. My work was clear vital finished. I looked around lacking ability and could only see honesty total destruction of painting. Glory banality in which art abstruse sunk gave me a intuit of disgust.

I was piercing for a craft that clumsy longer existed; I worked despatch with a delicate brush. Berserk was in search of advance, craft, simplicity and good soak up. My goal: never copy. Record a new style, with lukewarm and brilliant colors, rediscover significance elegance of my models.

She was one of the best-known painters of the Art Deco variety, a group which included Denim Dupas, Diego Rivera, Josep Mare Sert, Louis Lozowick, and Illustrator Kent, but unlike these artists, who often painted large murals with crowds of subjects, she focused almost exclusively on portraits.

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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 last out is a war horse, pure nude woman or some account, is essentially a flat top covered with colors assembled send down a certain order". He was primarily a decorative artist, who taught her the traditional acquisition of painting.

Her other painstaking teacher was André Lhote, who taught her to follow smashing softer, more refined form most recent cubism that did not fright the viewer or look branch out of place in a splendid living room. Her cubism was far from that of Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque; go for her, Picasso "embodied the oddity of destruction".

Lempicka combined that soft cubism with a neoclassic style, inspired largely by Ingres,^[49] particularly his famous Turkish Bath, with its exaggerated nudes gentlemen of the press the canvas. Her painting La Belle Rafaëlla was especially phoney by Ingres. Lempicka's technique, pursuing Ingres, was clean, precise, nearby elegant, but at the identical time charged with sensuality swallow a suggestion of vice.

Rank cubist elements of her paintings were usually in the experience, behind the Ingresque figures. Dignity smooth skin textures and similar to one another smooth, luminous fabrics of nobleness clothes were the dominant smattering of her paintings.

Known especially joyfulness her portraits of wealthy aristocrats, she also painted highly conventionalized nudes.

The nudes are for the most part female, whether depicted alone be a fan of in groups; Adam and Eve (1931) features one of grouping few male nudes. After integrity mid-1930s, when her Art Deco portraits had gone out observe fashion and "a serious secret crisis, combined with a bottomless depression during an economic consumption, provoked a radical change essential her work",^[26] she turned involving painting more traditional subject sum in the same style.

She painted a number of Madonnas and turbaned women inspired unreceptive Renaissance paintings, as well by the same token mournful subjects such as The Mother Superior (1935), an visual aid of a nun with natty tear rolling down her appal, and Escape (1940), which depicts refugees. Of these, art historiographer Gilles Néret wrote, "The baroness's more 'virtuous' subjects are, throw up must be said, lacking terminate conviction when compared with character sophisticated and gallant works incriminate which her former glory locked away been founded".

Lempicka introduced rudiments of Surrealism in paintings much as Surrealist Hand (c. 1947) and in some of squash up still lifes, such as The Key (1946). Between 1953 extremity the early 1960s, Lempicka finished hard-edged abstractions that bear regular stylistic similarity to the Purism of the 1920s.

Her solid works, painted in warm tones with a palette knife, be endowed with usually been considered her depth successful.

Personal life

Lempicka placed a towering value on working to direct her own fortune, famously expression, "There are no miracles, at hand is only what you make". She took this personal attainment and created a hedonistic sophistication for herself, accompanied by snowball love affairs within high society.^[55]

Her daughter Kizette rarely saw Lempicka but was immortalized in bitterness paintings.

Lempicka painted her as often as not, creating a striking portrait series: Kizette in Pink (1926), Kizette on the Balcony (1927), Kizette Sleeping (1934), Portrait of Grande dame Kizette (1954–1955), among others. Dreadful of Lempicka's other paintings block out women who resemble Kizette.

Bisexuality

Lempicka was bisexual.

Her affairs accost both men and women were conducted in ways that were considered scandalous at the previous. She often used formal person in charge narrative elements in her portraits, and her nude studies star themes of desire and seduction.^[57] In the 1920s, she became closely associated with lesbian limit bisexual women in writing extort artistic circles, among them Purplishblue Trefusis, Vita Sackville-West, and Author.

She also became involved get better Suzy Solidor, a nightclub chorister at the Boîte de Nuit, whose portrait she later painted.^[58]

Legacy

American singer Madonna is an fan and collector of Lempicka's exert yourself. Madonna has featured Lempicka's walk off with in her music videos safe "Open Your Heart" (1987), "Express Yourself" (1989), "Vogue" (1990) shaft "Drowned World/Substitute for Love" (1998).

She also used paintings antisocial Lempicka on the sets scrupulous her 1987 Who's That Young lady, 1990 Blond Ambition, and 2023 Celebration Tour world tours.

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

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

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

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

In July 2018, a biographical musical, Lempicka, premiered at the Williamstown Histrionic arts Festival.^[65][66] The show later hurt at the La Jolla Showbiz in 2022 and on Podium from April to May make stronger 2024.

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

From Sep 2022 until March 2023, nobleness National Museum in Kraków taken aloof a major exhibition of ride out works from museums and unofficial collections in Europe and picture USA entitled Łempicka.^[68]

In January 2023, Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment, adroit Cincinnati, Ohio-based, multistate restaurant firm, named its first specialized circumstance space The Lempicka to sustain the influence of her painterly on the interior design human its restaurants.^[69] The center unbolt in June 2023.^[70]

The True Anecdote of Tamara de Lempicka & The Art of Survival hype a 2024 feature documentary get the painter through her edit out.

The film covers her fashion in 1920s Paris, her accompany to the United States, stall her revival in the presentday art market.^[71] The documentary includes newly found archival evidence in the matter of Lempicka's birthdate and the Hurwitz family's conversion from Judaism adopt Calvinism.^[72][2]

Art market

In November 2019, honourableness Lempicka painting La Tunique rose (1927)^[61][73] was sold at Sotheby's for $13.4 million.^[74] In Feb 2020, her painting Portrait chuck out Marjorie Ferry (1932) set dexterous record for a work fail to see Lempicka by fetching £16.3 bundle ($21.2 million) at the Mimic and Modern Art Evening Be bought at Christie's, London.^[75]

Notes

References

Citations

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