Tamara de Lempicka. The Art Déco painter and extraordinary woman

Tamara was one of the greatest artists of 20th Century. She was a Polish aristocrat, but she spent all her life living in different countries like Russia, France, US and Mexico.

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Everywhere she lived she was a true star and she was named recently in one the books: "The first woman artist to be a glamour star". She was also very controversial, bisexual, very beautiful and an elegant woman, who loved the bohemian life and was the socialite of every elite salon.

Apart from her exciting social life she was mostly fashionable a portrait painter. Her paintings were post-cubism, built from simple shapes, but very classy. She was inspired by the art of great Italian renaissance artists and by Albrecht Durer.

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She used bright colours and plenty of light. Characters on her paintings had simple shapes and very often in complicated poses. Definitely portraits of women, which she painted a lot and made her famous. Women that she captured were always very fashionable, sophisticated, modern, elegant and often...nude. The real Femme fatale of the epoque that she lived in.


 

Tamara at her Atelier



Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti, 1925

This is one of the most famous painting with exciting story behind the scene. She was in Monte-Carlo when someone left her a note that they would like to meet her in Nice. This mystery person was no one else than the editor of German magazine "Die Dame". She was amazed with Tamara who wore cloths in the same colour as her yellow and black Renault. She asked Tamara to paint herself and she published this portrait on the magazine's cover in July 1929.

Lempicka made few changes in her appearance. She painted herself in Bugatti, not in Renault, because it was the most modern car that time. The car wasn't yellow, but it was green because it was Tamara's favourite colour. She wore a helmet, leather gloves and a large scarf.
Her eyes are lightly closed and her look is as cold as ice; the only bright part of the painting is her extremely red lips.
This painting was the symbol and manifest of Art Déco and 1920's.

Some other painings of Tamara de Lempicka:

Gustav Klimt- the Symbolist Genius

             

"The Kiss" 1907–1908

I couldn't have started my blog from a different post than this one, about Gustav Klimt. 

He is one of my favorite artists and his painting "The Kiss" is a quintessence of everything that I love in art...Beauty of women, geometrical elements, symbolism, colours and atmosphere. All elements makes this paining unique, beautiful and a line between traditional and modern art. It's a blend of renaissance, baroque and cubism, which is about to appear soon after.

Feminine elements are enhanced by the golden and silver chords. The woman face is so real, while we can't see the face of her partner, which suggests that she is more important. Her gown is beautifully ornamented, full of mosaic and floral elements. While the man's gown is filled with geometrical patterns, which impose masculine shapes, woman’s gown is flowery and this definitely imposes her connection to earth and nature.

This painting shows us the real love, two lovers are symbolically dissolving in an embrace. Man protects woman, because she is delicate and feminine. She is captured in the moment when she is waiting for the kiss...There is hesitation, eroticism, desire, true love, all feelings blend while the lovers stays in the close embrace. Their souls are united.

"The Kiss" definitely makes us think about the scene, which we have just seen. Leaves us with reflection and every person can find in it a bit of their feelings, emotions, desires and everything else they miss in their life...