Art of Tamara de Lempicka

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

Tamara de Lempicka (1898 to 1980), Art Deco painter.

the girls
“The Girls” (1928) oil on canvas.
batman wall art
A great, beautiful, mural, by Tamara de Lempicka. This is a scene from the movie Batman

Tamara Łempicka (born Tamara Rosalia Gurwik-Górska;[1] 16 May 1898 to 18 March 1980), better known as Tamara de Lempicka, was a Polish painter who spent her working life in France and the United States. She is best known for her polished Art Deco portraits of aristocrats and the wealthy, and for her highly stylized paintings of nudes.

[2023-07-13 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamara_de_Lempicka]

Camille Paglia on Tamara de Lempicka

Her work reflects the neoclassical revival of the 1920s, to which Picasso contributed with his colossal seaside nudes. Lempicka belongs to the line of painters, extending through Jacques-Louis David and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, who stress sharp outlines and sculptural mass. Indeed, a contemporary critic, noting Lempicka's heavy, languid forms and polished surfaces, called her “the perverse Ingres of the Machine Age.” She admired Botticelli, Antonello da Messina, and Mannerists like Bronzino and Pontormo, with their refined, armored style. Her subjects were the glittering habitués of postwar Paris café society, where new money met old and where cosmopolitan refugees mixed with Jazz Age entertainers and madcap youth.

from Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars by Camille Paglia. Buy at amazon

Lempicka  the musician 44a6a
“The Musician” (1929), oil on canvas.
Lempicka  Portrait of Doctor Boucard e2433
Portrait of Doctor Boucard

For other Art Deco work, see: