Maria Górska, better known as Tamara de Lempicka (1898 - 1980), was a Polish modern artist born in 1898. From a wealthy family, she traveled throughout Eastern Europe. When World War I broke out, she stayed in Saint Petersburg, where she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1916, she married Polish lawyer Tadeusz Lempicki. The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 forced the affluent couple into exile, first to Copenhagen and then to Paris. Lempicka decided to pursue painting, mainly to support her family as her husband struggled to find work. In 1920, she studied under Maurice Denis and André Lhote at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, where she began developing her iconic style: a blend of Neo-Cubism, Mannerism, and Futurism, with sharp, smooth colors, pronounced volumes, and strong chiaroscuro on modern subjects.

Lempicka’s unique style cemented her status as a key modern artist. Her persona as an emancipated woman, surrounded by glamour and luxury, remains legendary. Her artworks achieve high auction prices, with top pieces selling for between three and five million euros, and some nearing twelve million euros. Her limited output, combined with high demand from collectors and art enthusiasts, drives these prices. She traveled to Italy to study and copy the works of admired masters such as Pontormo, further developing her sensual and decorative style. In 1922, she exhibited a portrait at the Salon d’Automne in Paris, and her career truly took off after a solo exhibition in Milan in 1925, leading to immediate success, luxury, and connections within Parisian bohemian and elite circles.

Lempicka became well-known for her portraits, often of garçonnes—the bold, androgynous women of the Art Deco era—which sometimes invited interpretations of the model’s sexual ambiguity. She appreciated the beauty of women and celebrated emancipation and modernity, despite being married twice. She remarried in 1933 to Baron Raoul Kuffner, who provided her with a comfortable lifestyle, and she gradually began to paint less. She fled World War II by moving to the United States, where she held three exhibitions. As Art Deco fell out of fashion, her work faded into obscurity until the 1970s, when a revival of the style brought her back into the spotlight. Lempicka’s rediscovered works inspired pop culture icons like Madonna. The artist passed away in 1980 in Mexico.

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