Inspiring

Tamara Łempicka

Tamara Łempicka, a Polish painter, one of the most important representatives of the art déco style. She lived between 1898 and 1980, but created her most famous paintings in the 1920s. She was able to evocatively transfer the extraordinary atmosphere of the era of the crazy 1920s, onto her canvases, just as Francis Scott Fitzgerald depicted it in his works, with ‘The Great Gatsby’ at the forefront. 

A characteristic element of Tamara Lempicka’s painting was her attention to detail. She is said to have been able to spend long hours or even whole days on a small detail on her canvas. Her paintings and portraits were highly decorative, thanks to her ability to combine traditional painting with post-cubist styling, as well as the use of pure, vivid, expressive colours. The figures in her paintings are predominantly women, emancipated, knowing their worth, seductive yet inaccessible. Just look at ‘Self-Portrait in a Green Bugatti’ (1922) or ‘A Girl with Gloves’…

Unlike most talented painters, Tamara Lempicka was extremely lucky: at the age of twenty, her talent was recognised, which translated into material success. She became a sought-after painter of portraits and nudes, which adorned the homes of the wealthy bourgeoisie and aristocracy of Warsaw, Paris and other European capitals. She had talent, money and fame. And she loved what she did. She painted for over a dozen hours a day to fulfil her orders.

In her private life she was also distinguished by her independence and uncompromising nature. She consistently broke the accepted canons of morality and moral norms, and disregarded so-called social opinion. A scandalist, she entered into numerous affairs with both men and women.

Today, her paintings fetch dizzying prices. In 2020, at Christie’s auction house in London, Lempicka’s ‘Portrait de Marjorie Ferry’ was sold for 16.3 million British pounds! In 2021 she ranked third in the list of the world’s most expensive female painters, after Georgia O’Keeffe and Frida Kahlo. Admirers of the artist’s talent and collectors of her work include Barbara Streisand, Madonna and Jack Nicholson.

Until mid-March 2023, a unique collection of Tamara Lempicka’s paintings, her photographs and artefacts from the 1920s era can be viewed at the Villa la Fleur Museum in Konstancin-Jeziorna near Warsaw. It is really worth it!