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in: Painters, Artists, Art Deco Artists

Tamara de Lempicka

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Tamara de Lempicka (circa 1931-32) photographed by Camuzzi

Tamara de Lempicka (circa 1931-32) photographed by Camuzzi

Baroness Tamara Kuffner (Tamara Rosalia Gurwik-Górska, May 16, 1898 — March 18, 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.

Following her husband's imprisonment from the Bolsheviks, escaping to Paris and the birth of her only child "Kizette", She studied painting with Maurice Denis and André Lhote. Her style was a blend of late, refined cubism and the neoclassical style, inspired by the works of Agnolo Bronzino and Jean-Dominique Auguste Ingres. She was an active participant in the artistic and bohemian social life of Paris between the wars. In 1928, she became the mistress and eventually wife of Baron Raoul Kuffner, a wealthy art collector from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, she and her second husband moved to the United States and she painted celebrity portraits, as well as still lives and, in the 1960s, some abstract paintings. Her work was out of fashion after World War II, but made a comeback in the late 1960s, with the rediscovery of both Art Nouveau and Art Deco. She moved to Mexico in 1974, where she died in 1980. At her request, her ashes were scattered over the Popocatépetl volcano.

Style and subjects[]

Lempicka's own description of her work:

"I was the first woman to make clear paintings, and that was the origin of my success ... Among a hundred canvases, mine were always recognizable. The galleries tended to show my pictures in the best rooms, because they attracted people. My work was clear and finished. I looked around me and could only see the total destruction of painting. The banality in which art had sunk gave me a feeling of disgust. I was searching for a craft that no longer existed; I worked quickly with a delicate brush. I was in search of technique, craft, simplicity and good taste. My goal: never copy. Create a new style, with luminous and brilliant colors, rediscover the elegance of my models."

Les Jeune Fille Aux Gants (1930) - Tamara de Lempicka

Les Jeune Fille Aux Gants (1930) - Tamara de Lempicka

She was one of the best-known painters of the Art Deco style, a group which included Jean Dupas, Diego Rivera, Josep Maria Sert, Reginald Marsh, and Rockwell Kent, but unlike these artists, who often painted large murals with crowds of subjects, she focused almost exclusively on portraits.

Her first teacher at the Academie Ranson in Paris was Maurice Denis, who taught her according to his celebrated maxim: "Remember that a painting, before it is a war horse, a nude woman or some anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order." He was primarily a decorative artist, who taught her the traditional craftsmanship of painting. Her other influential teacher was André Lhote, who taught her to follow a softer, more refined form of cubism that did not shock the viewer or look out of place in a luxurious living room. Her cubism was far from that of Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque; For her, Picasso "embodied the novelty of destruction". Lempicka combined this soft cubism with a neoclassical style, inspired largely by Ingres, particularly his famous Turkish Bath, with its exaggerated nudes crowding the canvas. One of her well known works "La Belle Rafaëlla" was especially influenced by Ingres. Lempicka's technique, following Ingres, was clean, precise, and elegant, but at the same time charged with sensuality and a suggestion of vice. The cubist elements of her paintings were usually in the background, behind the Ingres influenced figures. The smooth skin textures and equally smooth, luminous fabrics of the clothes were the dominant elements of her paintings.

Known especially for her portraits of wealthy aristocrats and her self portrait, she also painted highly stylized nudes. The nudes are usually female, whether depicted alone or in groups; Adam and Eve (1931) features one of her few male nudes. After the mid-1930s, when her Art Deco portraits had gone out of fashion and "a serious mystical crisis, combined with a deep depression during an economic recession, provoked a radical change in her work," she turned to painting less frivolous subject matter in the same style. She painted a number of Madonna's and turbaned women inspired by Renaissance paintings, as well as mournful subjects such as The Mother Superior (1935), an image of a nun with a tear rolling down her cheek, and Escape (1940), which depicts refugees. Of these, art historian Gilles Néret wrote, "The baroness's more 'virtuous' subjects are, it must be said, lacking in conviction when compared with the sophisticated and gallant works on which her former glory had been founded." Lempicka introduced elements of Surrealism in paintings such as Surrealist Hand (c. 1947) and in some of her still lives, such as The Key (1946). Between 1953 and the early 1960s, Lempicka painted hard-edged abstractions that bear a stylistic similarity to the Purism of the 1920s. Her last works, painted in warm tones with a palette knife (almost in a brutalist application), have usually been considered her least successful.

Autoportrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti) (1928)

Autoportrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti) (1928)

However, Lempicka's famous painting is the aforementioned self portrait commissioned by the editrix of the German fashion magazine "Die Dame" to feature in their covers, while she was shopping in a Chanel store in Monte Carlo with her little yellow Renault. The result of her meeting the editrix was a self portrait of Tamara driving an emerald green Bugatti (instead of the Renault she drove).

References created by Lady Gaga[]

Lady Gaga made several references of Tamara de Lempicka's works in some eras in her career. The first reference was in Coachella (2017), the second is a video interlude for the Joanne World Tour (2017-2018) and most recently in another video interlude for the Chromatica Ball.

COACHELLA[]

In 2017, Lady Gaga's stage for her set at Coachella consists of a Cubist backdrop that emulates the view of New York City. That also references several of Tamara de Lempicka's portraits of Women (most especially Nude) and several studies of her view of New York.

The Chromatica Ball[]

For the Chromatica Ball, Lady Gaga and longtime collaborator Nick Knight worked on six films for the tour. One of which is an interlude directed by Knight and Raquel Couceiro. featuring a Christian Lacroix clad Gaga striking theatrical poses on several backdrops created by set designer Andrew Tomlinson. The backdrops were inspired by majority of Tamara de Lempicka's signature Art Deco paintings and rare watercolor paintings from 1928-1935 and some of her later works from the 1940's-1954, capturing the essence and cinematic elements that Tamara was well known for. According to Nick Knight, The Art Deco set was said to be inspired by and came from the set used for the Apocalyptic Film from The Monster Ball Tour.

The soundtrack of the film was produced by Bloodpop, TCHAMI and Burns, which consists of chopped and reverbed samples of "Rain On Me", "Plastic Doll" and "Free Woman", automated TB-303 Acid Basslines, the bassline stem from "Venus" and the famous South Canadian Loon sample from the Emu-Emulator II synthesizer used for 808 State's Pacific State and Gaga's very own Babylon. The film was coined by fans as the "Tamara film", which opens ACT 4 of the show.

  1. Lady Gaga wears a gown, a coat, a headpiece, and a veil by Christian Lacroix, and earrings by Miss Sohee.
  2. Lady Gaga wears a gown by Christian Lacroix, a headpiece by Philip Treacy for Alexander McQueen, earrings by Miss Sohee, a bracelet by VICKISARGE, and two rings by Swarovski.
Interludes and backdrops
Musical interludes
As Opening act
The Fame Ball
The Monster Ball
Joanne World Tour
The Chromatica Ball
The Mayhem Ball
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