Tamara de Lempicka, the artist as femme fatale

This exhibition in Paris collects the most outstanding artworks by the Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka, icon of the Art Déco and of women emancipation during the 20’s, with his androgynous style and open sexuality. 

For a woman the fact of claiming for having the same status as men had in the twenties was something extremely daring; even in a decade considered as modern and of happy thoughtlessness that came after the Great War. But this is precisely what the Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka did; the emblem of the modern short-haired woman that smokes and drinks strong liquors, participates in car races and manages her businesses personally. 

De Lempicka, the Queen of the Art Déco movement in the 1920’s Paris, clamoured for sex equality from a provoking openly shown bisexuality. A feature that is told by her artworks, portraits of women suited with men’s clothes in a tomboy style that nowadays lives on the catwalks.  

The exhibition is the most important on her work ever done in the last decades and there are some works exhibited for the first time publically. This show is a must, above all, because her work is not frequently exhibited, even when De Lempicka is one of the most admired artists and quintessence of elegance with her femme fatales, embodied in real life by Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo or Josephine Baker.

She was born in Warsaw in 1898 in a well-off family, and lived in Russia until 1918, when she moved to Paris. In 1939, fleeing from the Nazi regime went to the United States and began her new life; an opportunity for reinventing herself. 

More info: Pinacothèque de Paris

Until September 8th, 2013