I may not know art but I know what I like

Tamara de Lempicka

She was born Tamara Gorska in Warsaw in 1898. She came from a wealthy family and married a well-off attorney, Tadeusz Lempicki, in Petrograd in 1916.

In 1918 Tamara and Tadeusz emigrated to Paris and Tamara gave birth to her only child, Kizette. It is here she received her first painting lessons- from Andr Lhote and Maurice Denis. Shortly thereafter her first paintings were sold from the Gallerie Colette Weill.

In 1925 she made a name for herself exhibiting at the first Art Deco exhibition in Paris. After having affairs with more than one wealthy "patron of the arts" she divorced Tadeusz, and married Baron Raoul Kuffner in 1933.

Raoul and Tamara moved to America in 1939 and exhibitions dedicated exclusively to her work appeared at The Paul Reinhart Gallery, Julian Levy's, Courvoisier Galleries, and the Milwaukee Institute of Art. Her artistic output, however, was decreasing.

In 1960 she changed her style to abstract art and began creating works with a spatula. When Raoul died of a heart attack in 1962 she all but gave up on painting.

In 1980, while living in Mexico, Tamara died in her sleep. Her daughter Kizette scattered her ashes over the crater of Mt. Popocatptl.

That was the tamer version of her autobiography but one only had to look at her works filled with erotic imagery both subtle and completely bold, to realize she was a woman who lived life completely on her own terms. her erotic paintings depicted women predominantely and rumors swirled about her sexuality. Those who knew her both as a friend and intimately confirmed the rumors and she never according to some admitted or denied but was reported to have said "Let them think what they like."  in searching for more information on her I came across this bio of a much more colorful nature.

De Lempicka was a very physical person. Her first lesbian affair was with a wealthy redhead, probably Ira Perrot, who modeled for her and took her to Italy, paying all expenses.

In Italy, the artist discovered the paintings of Botticelli and Messina and attended lesbian parties. At one such gathering she arranged food tastefully on the body of a nude woman and then slowly ate "her midnight meal." In her trips to Italy, she became part of a circle that included Violette Trefusis--the lover of Vita Sackville-West--and Colette.

These women appreciated bisexual behavior and had numerous affairs with individuals of both sexes. In 1933, de Lempicka began an affair with a singer at the Bote de Nuit, Suzy Solidar, a friendship that lasted several decades.

Generally, however, the artist pursued older men as social companions but slept with younger and handsome ones. Sophisticated, fashionable, and beautiful, she was often seen caressing a working-class boy one night and a woman the next. Eventually, Tadeusz refused to return to her and in 1928 they were divorced.

By the mid 1930s de Lempicka's work was extremely well received, although it has never fit neatly within stylistic boundaries. Her stylized and sleekly androgynous art deco portraits and compositions softened cubism into a decadent lushness. She sought the crispness of the old masters and rejected the Impressionists, whom she characterized as "dirty" and "not neat." But she also worked within the modernist tradition of concentrating on the surfaces of paintings.

While her portraits from 1920 to 1940 can be located within the French art deco school, her later work touches on other traditions, including Surrealism and still life. Among the unique aspects of her style is the overt lesbianism that informs it, especially in her female nudes.

In 1934, de Lempicka married Baron Raoul Kuffner, who held title to the largest single estate in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He had asked her in 1928 to paint his mistress, the famous Andalusian dancer Nana de Herrera. The portrait has been seen as something of an assassination, since it makes the graceful dancer appear gauche and awkward. The portraitist soon replaced de Herrera as the baron's mistress.

At the outbreak of war in 1939, de Lempicka and her husband emigrated to America. After a successful one-woman show in Paul Reinhart's Gallery in Los Angeles, de Lempicka and her husband took up residence in director King Vidor's former home in Beverly Hills.

She was soon the "Favorite Artist of the Hollywood Stars." Greta Garbo, Dolores del Rio, and Tyrone Power visited her studio. Even today Lempicka's connection with Hollywood continues, as the most avid contemporary collectors of her paintings are Madonna and Jack Nicholson.

De Lempicka died in her sleep in 1980. A play based on her life, Tamara, opened in Hollywood in 1985 with Anjelica Huston and had a long run. Although Lempicka's work was out of favor for many years, it has recently enjoyed a new appreciation, ironically for those very qualities of decadence and hedonism that caused critics of the 1960s and 1970s to dismiss her.

Well as I said I may not know art but I know what I like and I love her works.  Check out my mini gallery of some of my favorites