Conedo's Blog

About an artwork and its creator, part 3 September 20, 2011

Portrait of a Young Woman in a Green Dress by Tamara de Lempicka 

The Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka (birth name Maria Górska), born in May 16th 1898, created her own style in art often called “soft cubism” or “synthetic cubism. She was raised in a wealthy and prominent lawyer family in Warsaw and got her education in a boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland. At the age of 14 when her parents divorced, Maria moved to live with her rich Aunt Stefa in St. Petersburg, Russia. Here she started to study art at the Academy of Art.

“Portrait of a Young Girl in a Green Dress” (also known as “Jeune Fille en Vert”, “Young Girl With Gloves” or “Girl in Green With Gloves”; painted by Tamara de Lampicka 1930, oil on plywood. Size: 45,5 x 61,5 cm

In 1916, when Maria was 18 years old, she married the lawyer Tadeusz Lempicki, who the year after (during the Russian Revolution) got arrested by the Bolsheviks. With the help of the Swedish Consul, she managed to get her husband released and they left Russia for initially Copenhagen, Denmark, then London, England to finally settle down in Paris, France. In Paris Maria changed her name to Tamara and after giving birth to a daughter Kizette, she continued to develop her art studies at the  Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse.

Tamara de Lempicka

She quickly became the most fashionable portrait painter of her generation and a leading representative within the Art Deco
genre. During the 1920s she was part of the bohemian life in Paris and made several scandals with her affairs with both men and women. In 1928 Tamara and Tadeusz divorced. In 1933 she married her lover, Baron Kuffner who brought her back from the bohemian life to the high society again. In 1939, shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, the couple relocated to the United States.

Tamara de Lempicka

When her husband Baron Kuffner died in 1962, and after criticized and less successful exhibitions the same year, she stopped to show her works to the public. She sold most of her belongings, made 3 around-the-world-cruises by ship and moved to Houston, Texas to be with her daughter Kizette and her family.

In 1978 Tamara moved to Cuernavaca in Mexico where she 2 years later died on March 18, 1980. By then, her early Art Deco paintings had regained its enormous popularity among new generations of art lovers.

The original painting can be seen in the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, France.