Tamara de Lempicka

Paul Britvar
P.3 smith
art 1
Apr.

- 3-05
Tamara De
Lempicka (1898-1980)
Born into the wealthy Gorska family in Poland, Warsaw. Tamara De lempicka was the middle child of four. She had an older brother named Stanczyk Gorski and a younger sister Adrienne, who were both bossed around by their tempestuous sister. Her father who was an attorney for a French trading company and her mother who was a well educated aristocrat had properly brought up Tamara and her siblings. However, around the age of 12-13, the Gorska family split up, sending Tamara to St. Petersburg where a wealthy relative of hers lived.

The wealthy grandma spoilt her, with vacations to Italy and other renaissance countries which were considered as the beginnings of her artistic inspirations.
Tamara, who earlier on had always remarkably ac celled in the artistic subjects of her learning soon received a well-rounded education as a result of her high class standing. And so at the age of 12, when she was introduced to some of her first art classes it was evident that the girls strong will and dominant personality made it difficult for her to be still for the sittings. However, soon De Lempicka was so pleased with her work that she soon began her life-long love affair wit art. during 1918, as she studied painting at the Academe De la Grand Chaumiere, and was privately tutored by Maurice Denis and studied Andre Lhote. In which time, she quickly established a reputation as a painter of portraits, mainly of people in the smart social circles impressed writers, entertainers, and the deposed nobility of eastern Europe.

she was soon skilled enough to exhibit her works at the first Art Deco show in Paris, 1925.
Two years following her first marriage, and the start of her long foretasted art career, Her husband Taduesz Lempicka was arrested by the check. otherwise known as the Bolshevik secret police. Years later, they finally escaped and changed their name to Lempicka.

The changes which had occurred, and the jail time which Taduez faced coldly split the two up and as her life progressed she was forced into fugitiveism with a scarce money source because her husband was not able to find work. Through the hard times news of pregnancy forced a determined Tamara to pursue her wealthy life style and turn to art to make a living.
De lempicka's first paintings caught the eye of Collette will, who was an important figure owning many European galleries. In one of her galleries, many patrons seemed to fall in love with the "sensual", shocking portraits which boldly identified De Lempicka's unique style; which tweaked and slightly combined Picasso's Cubism and design...

otherwise known as Art Deco and a very popular and well liked form of art at that particular time. She was rewarded with immediate financial success and soon became a celebrity in the art world. Once again, De lempicka was able to live laviously.Between the 1920s and 1930s, De Lempicka produced paintings that would become quite famous.

One of her most famous and most sought-after pieces, was an Auto-portrait called Tamara in the Green Bugatti, completed in 1925, just a year after she had differenced complete bankruptcy with her husband, Taduesz Lepicki. Some of her later popular pieces were included in the cubist collection were called Die Dame, (1927) Kizette on the balcony (1932) and Kizette's first Communion, (1933) all of which she was heavily awarded for in the Exposition internationale in Posnan, (Portland). After divorcing her first husband, toward the aristocratic time in her life she met a gentleman named Baron Raoul Kuffner, who was soon to be her next future husband. Baron Raoul Kuffner who was a Austro-Hungarian who had collected a large portion of her works hired Lempicka to paint a portrait of his mistress.

Soon integrated to the family system, she found that she was provided with everything she had ever wanted... a title, money, culture and epically a stature. This stature was quickly made as De Lempicka became more popular as an artists and continued to work. She was so popular, in fact, that wealthy royalty would wait in line to have the honor of their portrait painted by the famous Tamara De Lempicka.

However with the upcoming war on the horizon, the perfect lifestyle could not last.
As the Nazi influence in 1939 spread across Europe and the wealthy were faced with the threat of World War II, unemployment was a common factor and the whole world was in a heavy state of chaos. Painting for a rich audience was excepted no more, at that time, meaningful pieces resembling war efforts and common day tragedies were more popular for the art galleries, who would save the pieces as a documentary of the time. And having fled from war once before, during the Russian Revolution, De Lempicka knew all too well about the financial insecurity that would ensue when war finally broke.
With this intelligence, the Kuffners in 1943 quickly decided to move to New York. By this time however her social life had slowly begun to corrupt her art.

And when she arrived in America, she realized that her production slowed and she slowly disappeared from the art world for nearly 20 years. But in the year 1960 she ventured into abstract art in an attempt to reclaim her famous status. But in 1962, her work was taken with a critical yawn, De Lempicka gave up on painting as a career and never exhibited again.
Later, Lempicka moved to Huston and later to Luxembourg and finally to Cuernavaca, Mexico. She bought a beautiful house called Tres Bambut in a chic neighborhood in 1978. by this time, De Lempicka had grown severely ill and died in her sleep on March 18, 1980; and the ashes from her cremated body were spread over a crater of Mt.

Popocatepetl, an active volcano. Although De Lempicka died, her art business carried on, and toward the 1990s her uncredited art work done in the 1960s was rediscovered and received an enormous surge in popularity; many of her works such as Adam an Eve went for over 1.5mil, sold by Barbara Streisand.
De Lempicka was an amazing artist who had perfected very interesting and unique forms of art work.

Her accomplishments gave here a global stature, which had always been her wishes and dreams. Also, De Lempicka was considered as a survivor from the fluxuating status of her interesting life.