Commissioned in 1928 by the popular German fashion magazine Die Dame for the magazine cover, to celebrate the independence of women.
The female editor of Die Dame, encountered De Lempicka in Monte Carlo while the almost-divorced baroness was on vacation and commissioned her to paint a self-portrait for an upcoming cover.
It is one of the best-known examples of Art Deco portrait painting.
She portrayed herself as a personification of cold beauty, independence, wealth and inaccessibility.
In fact she did not own a Bugatti automobile; her own car was a small yellow Renault, which was stolen one night when she and her friends were celebrating at Café de la Rotonde in Montparnasse.
Although De Lempicka's portrait shows the steering wheel on the left side of the car, the Bugatti models 23, 43 and 46 of that period actually had the steering wheel on the right side.
Although De Lempicka's portrait shows the steering wheel on the left side of the car, the Bugatti models 23, 43 and 46 of that period actually had the steering wheel on the right side.
She flitted between the Ritz Hotel in Paris and the Grand Hotel in Monte Carlo, socializing with — and capturing on canvas — her era’s elite.
She counted Queen Elizabeth of Greece, King Alfonso XIII of Spain, and the Italian poet-prince Gabriele d’Annunzio among her sitters. As Jean Cocteau put it, Lempicka ‘loved art and high society in equal measure’.
She is renowned for an Art Deco style which oozed cool chic and elegant sensuality. Portraiture was her genre, featuring stylized subjects bedecked in seductive textures and bathed in flattering light. For some works, Lempicka used herself as model, which made sense given she wore clothes by Coco Chanel and was occasionally mistaken in public for Greta Garbo.
She counted Queen Elizabeth of Greece, King Alfonso XIII of Spain, and the Italian poet-prince Gabriele d’Annunzio among her sitters. As Jean Cocteau put it, Lempicka ‘loved art and high society in equal measure’.
She is renowned for an Art Deco style which oozed cool chic and elegant sensuality. Portraiture was her genre, featuring stylized subjects bedecked in seductive textures and bathed in flattering light. For some works, Lempicka used herself as model, which made sense given she wore clothes by Coco Chanel and was occasionally mistaken in public for Greta Garbo.
In the mid 1930s Lempicka married Raoul Kuffner, a wealthy Hungarian baron. Both he and Tamara had Jewish ancestry, and sensing the way the political wind was blowing in Europe, they decided to leave for the United States in 1939.
Removed from the Paris avant-garde, Lempicka never recaptured the highs of earlier in her career. Without dukes or counts to paint, she struggled for suitable subject matter and ended up moving into abstraction.
She spent the last few years of her life in Mexico, dying in 1980. Her final artistic gesture was asking her daughter Kizette to hire a helicopter, head up to Mount Popocateptl and scatter her ashes in its volcanic crater.
After her death, there came another wave of enthusiasm for her work. Barbara Streisand and Madonna were collectors. The latter was such a fan that she included a host of Lempicka pictures at the start of the video for her song Vogue.
Removed from the Paris avant-garde, Lempicka never recaptured the highs of earlier in her career. Without dukes or counts to paint, she struggled for suitable subject matter and ended up moving into abstraction.
She spent the last few years of her life in Mexico, dying in 1980. Her final artistic gesture was asking her daughter Kizette to hire a helicopter, head up to Mount Popocateptl and scatter her ashes in its volcanic crater.
After her death, there came another wave of enthusiasm for her work. Barbara Streisand and Madonna were collectors. The latter was such a fan that she included a host of Lempicka pictures at the start of the video for her song Vogue.
