Tamara de Lempicka

(Poland, 16/05/1898 - 18/03/1980)

La Tunique Rose (1927)

Born as Maria Gorska to a wealthy family and raised in early-twentieth-century Warsaw, de Lempicka constructed some of the most radical, liberal and avant-garde images of same-sex desire at a time when such a subject was not only taboo, but punishable by death.

A year after marrying Taduesz Lempicki, as the Russian Revolution was well underway, a sixteen-year-old Lempicka used her looks to charm favours from officials and managed to free him from a Bolshevik prison. The pair then fled to Paris where she changed her name to Tamara de Lempicka and enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière followed by the Académie Ranson and supported herself with her paintings while her husband refused to work, resenting her extravagant behaviour and growing artistic success.

Known for being able to work for nine hours straight (breaking only for “baths and champagne”), de Lempicka epitomised the modern woman and her affairs with both men and women have become as infamous as her art. In the late 1930s, she moved to Beverly Hills with her second husband, Baron Kuffner, where she continued to paint and throw lavish parties for hundreds of guests. 

While living between the U.S and Europe in the post-War period, she made a drastic change in her work and began to experiment with abstraction. It wasn’t, however, until a revival of Art Deco in the 1970s that her work gained widespread recognition, with her images of strong, independent women being celebrated in the 70s feminist movement, solidifying her as one of Art Deco’s rare female icons.

Image: Tamara de Lempicka, La Tunique Rose (1927). Oil on canvas, 72.6 x 116.3 cm. Private collection.