Thursday, November 03, 2011

DAS • Tamara de Lempicka.



Tamara de Lempicka was born as Maria Gorska on May 16, 1898 in Russia. She is known as a glamorous painter—well-to-do lifestyle, very beauty. She was graced with good looks and an equally talented hand. She created magnificent Art Deco paintings—featuring symmetrical, rectilinear style, and Cubist influence—developing a distinctive, bold style at a young age.

Lempicka was born in to a wealthy family. She had two siblings, one older and one younger. She attended a nice boarding school and visited her grandmother in Italy in the winters. It was on one of these winter trips that Lempicka was treated to her first taste of fine Italian painting. An artistic seed was planted that day.

Lempicka was born in to a wealthy family. She had two siblings, one older and one younger. She attended a nice boarding school and visited her grandmother in Italy in the winters. It was on one of these winter trips that Lempicka was treated to her first taste of fine Italian painting. An artistic seed was planted that day.

Lempicka was born in to a wealthy family. She had two siblings, one older and one younger. She attended a nice boarding school and visited her grandmother in Italy in the winters. It was on one of these winter trips that Lempicka was treated to her first taste of fine Italian painting. An artistic seed was planted that day.

Lempicka was born in to a wealthy family. She had two siblings, one older and one younger. She attended a nice boarding school and visited her grandmother in Italy in the winters. It was on one of these winter trips that Lempicka was treated to her first taste of fine Italian painting. An artistic seed was planted that day.

In 1916, Lempicka married Tadeusz Lempicki, a lawyer and well-known ladies’ man. At this point, she was no longer known as Maria Gorska, but Tamara de Lempicka. When the Russian Revolution hit in 1917, the artist’s life hit a rough patch. The Bolsheviks incarcerated Lempicka’s husband. She had to secure his release and, immediately after, the couple moved around until finally settling in France where other upper-class Russian refugees—including Lempicka’s family—had also fled.

In Paris, Tadeusz Lempicki had trouble finding work. The couple had a child and resided in a drab hotel room. For a while the family lived off of the sale of precious valuables. Lempicka kept painting and, after a few years, she miraculously climbed to the top of the art world.  Her first major show was in Milan, Italy in 1925. She became one of the most well-known painters at the time.

Not only did Lempicki become well known because for her striking portraits, but she was also infamous for her libido. She was a bisexual Roaring 20s—something unheard of. She carried out scandalous affairs with both men and women. Many of her paintings featured this overpowering, sexual energy.

By 1931, she and Tadeusz Lempicka were divorced and Baron Kuffner became Tamara de Lempicki’s new love interest. They married in 1934 and Kuffner’s social status solidified her lifestyle as that of an aristocrat.



Lempicki painted portraits ranging from women to men to prostitutes to Hollywood stars to her daughter and herself. However, by the 1960s her interest in an artistic career fizzled out. Her husband,Kuffner died in 1961 and it was as though Lempicki took this as a queue. She focused more on being an eccentric socialite rather than an influential painter. For the rest of her life, Lempicki seemed to embody a “party” lifestyle. By the late 1970s, her health decreased substantially and she died in 1980.

Though Lempicki embodied the aristocratic, glamorous lifestyle—despite a few rough patches along the way—she was nevertheless a phenomenal painter. Her social life, especially that in Paris, was not particularly ennobling, but her art deco portraiture was highly successful. Lempicki’s talent is unmatched. A glamorous woman with an equally beautiful art style; her paintings are perhaps some of the most memorable works of art to come out of the 1920s.










 

 

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(Sources)
Moffatt, Charles. "Tamara De Lempicka." The Art History Archive - Art Resources for Students and Academics. Art History Archive, 2008. Web. 03 Nov. 2011. <http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/artdeco/Tamara-De-Lempicka.html>.
"TAMARA DE LEMPICKA." Arlindo Correia's Home Page. Web. 03 Nov. 2011. <http://www.arlindo-correia.com/021002.html>.
Tamara De Lempicka Biography. Web. 03 Nov. 2011. <http://www.tamara-de-lempicka.com/>.

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