Tamara Łempicka

Tamara de Lempicka was a prolific painter who often worked on commission for the rich and famous. Although she also made prints, Lempicka is best known for her paintings, which range from figurative to abstract and encompass portraits, figure studies, nudes, still lifes, urban scenes, and religious figures.

Lempicka got her start in Paris, where she moved with her husband shortly after the Russian Revolution of 1917. There she honed her artistic skills and established herself as a portraitist, working in an art deco style.

In 1928, De Lempicka was commissioned to make a self-portrait for the cover of the German fashion magazine Die Dame. The painting she produced showed her at the wheel of a Bugatti racing car, wearing a leather helmet and gloves and wrapped in a gray scarf. She portrayed herself as a personification of cold beauty, independence, wealth and inaccessibility.

In fact, she did not own a Bugatti automobile; her own car was a small yellow Renault, which was stolen one night when she and her friends were celebrating at La Rotonde in Montparnasse.

Between the two World Wars, the artist’s clientele included writers, fellow artists, scientists, and many of Eastern Europe’s exiled nobility. Lempicka’s career waned with the increasing popularity of abstraction during the postwar period, but she continued to paint until the end of her life.