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Tamara de Lempicka Biography
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Polish-born painter active in Paris and the USA She was born Tamara Gorska in Warsaw to wealthy parents and in 1916 she married Tadeusz Lempicki, a Russian lawyer and socialite.
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In 1918 they fled the Russian Revolution to Paris, where she studied with Maurice Denis and André Lhote. She quickly established a reputation as a painter of portraits, mainly of people in the smart social circles in which she moved-- writers, entertainers, the deposed nobility of eastern Europe.
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Her style owes something to the 'cubism' of Léger, but is very distinctive in its hard, streamlined elegance and sense of chic decadence-- better than anyone else she represents the Art Deco style in painting. Apart from portraits, her main subjects were erotic nudes and still lifes of calla lilies.
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She received considerable critical acclaim and also became a social celebrity, famed for her aloof Garboesque beauty, her parties, and her love affairs (with women as well as men).
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In 1939 she moved to the USA with her second husband Baron Raoul Huffner, repeating her artistic and social success in Hollywood and New York.
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By the 1950s, however, her work was going out of fashion. She tried painting pictures in a different, much looser style, but these were coolly received.
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| Selected Exhibitions |
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2004 - 2005
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Kunstforu, Vienna
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2004
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Royal Academy, London
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1997
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Museum of Fine Arts of Hiroshima, Hiroshima
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1994
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Academie de France (Villa Medici), Rome
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1972
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Galerie du Luxembourg, Paris
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| Literature |
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1997
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Blondel & Hiroohu, Lempicka, Tokyo, page 78, no. 32
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1994
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Calvesi & Borghese, Tamara de Lempicka. Tra eleganza e trasgressione. Leonardo Arte, Rome, no. 41
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1994
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Mori, Gioia, Lempicka Paris 1920-1938, Florence, page 196
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1993
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Neret Gilles, Lempicka 1898-1980, Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH, Cologne, page 30
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1993
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Thorman, Ellen Tamara de Lempicka, Berlin, no. 74
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1987
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De Lempicka-Foxhall & Phillips, Passion by Design, Abbeville Press Publishers, New York, page 128
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1986
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U.A.M., Editions du Regard, Paris, page 468
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1980
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Bazin & Itsuki, Lempicka, Parko Editions, Tokyo, No. 61
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1978
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Marmori, Giancarlo, Tamara de Lempicka, Idea Editions, page 58
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1972
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Vaux, Marc, Lempicka Foundation, Paris, No. 102
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1972
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Reau, Jean Lempicka Galerie Luxembourg, Paris, No. 43
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1935
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Dayot, Magdeleine A, "Tamara de Lempicka", No. 156
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1923
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De Lempicka, Tamara, Photo Album Notes, Lempicka Archives, Houston, No. 102
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| Links to further information |
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