Dimensions: 33.5 x 23 cm
signed with a facsimile stamp of the artist's atelier p.d.: 'T. DE LEMPICKA'
on the reverse a framing note, a stamp of a Venetian store of painting accessories with a barely legible description below and a round auction sticker with a number, on the frame transport and auction stickers
Condition
certificate of Yves Palantin and François Blondel dated November 16, 1983
Origin
Jean Claude Dewolf collection, Paris
Artcurial auction house, Paris, December 2020
private collection, Poland
Exhibited
Tamara de Lempicka. Reina del Art Déco, Palacio de Gaviria, Madrid, October 5, 2018 - May 26, 2019.
Biography
Polish painter whose work is cited as the quintessential art deco style in painting. As a young, rich girl, she studied at a boarding school in Lausanne, from where she traveled to Italy - she visited Rome, Florence, Venice - where she became fascinated by the paintings of the Renaissance masters. During World War I she lived in St. Petersburg, where she married a young lawyer Tadeusz Lempicki. In 1918, the couple settled in Paris. Lempicka then began studying painting at the Academie de la Grand Chaumiere and at the Academie Ranson under Maurice Denis and Andrea Lothe. She exhibited her paintings in salons and Paris galleries. She painted mainly portraits and nudes, mainly of wealthy or beautiful people. In 1928, she visited Warsaw three times, with an exhibition of her works at Warsaw's Zachęta Gallery; she also showed her two paintings at the General National Exhibition in Poznań. In 1939, she moved to the United States and settled in New York, spending the last years of her life in Mexico. "Lempicka's portraits, nudes and still lifes are a perfect realization of the art deco style: the type, costume, hairstyle and posing of the model are subordinated to it, as are all the background props and, finally, the manner of painting. Post-cubist stylization: emphasizing with drawing and light the three-dimensionality and hardness of forms, sharpness of color, smoothness of metallic, shiny surfaces, monumentalization, mannerism of shots and enamel precision of finishing make up Lempicka's style, perfectly in keeping with the aesthetics of the 1920s." - Agnieszka Morawińska
