Three Portraits of Jazz Age Artist Tamara de Lempicka

Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980) was a Polish Art Deco painter and “the first woman artist to be a glamour star”

She was born Maria Górska in Warsaw, Poland on May 16 (there are claims that she was in fact born in Moscow, Russia).

In 1916 Tamara married lawyer Tadeusz Lempicki in St. Petersburg, Russia and gave birth to a daughter she named Maria Krystyna, also known as Kizette.

In 1917 Tadeusz de Lempicki was arrested by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution but was soon released with the help of his wife. They traveled to Denmark and England and finally settled in Paris, France. Here Tamara studied art the “Academie de la Grande Chaumiere” in Montparnasse under Maurice Denis and Andre Lhote and started to exhibit in Paris in the early 1920s.

In 1925 she had her first major exhibition in Milan, Italy. It is believed that she finished 28 new works in 6 months.

In 1928 she divorced her husband and in 1933 she married the Baron Raoul Kuffner. They settled in the states and after Kuffner died she moved to Mexico where she died in 1980.

Tamara de Lempicka via

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Tamara de Lempicka in Marcel Rochas Dress, photographed by Ora, ca. 1931 via

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Tamara de Lempicka via