Polish painter who arrived in Paris in 1918 as a refugee from the Russian Revolution and became Art Deco's defining portraitist — polished, metallic nudes and society sitters, and a 1929 self-portrait at the wheel of a green Bugatti painted for a German magazine cover.
Tamara de Lempicka reached Paris in 1918 with a husband the Russian Revolution had briefly imprisoned, a small daughter, and no money, and decided painting would be the way out. Within a decade she was the most photographed painter in Paris and the portraitist of choice for the aristocracy and the newly rich — steel-smooth figures with chrome highlights, part Ingres — the nineteenth-century French master of porcelain-smooth figures — part machine age.
Her 1929 Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti, painted as a cover for the German fashion magazine Die Dame, became the shorthand image of Art Deco woman: gloved, helmeted, at the wheel. The look was manufactured and she manufactured it — the studio at 7 rue Méchain, designed by her sister, the architect Adrienne Gorska, with chrome-and-glass interiors in the manner of the modernist Robert Mallet-Stevens, doubled as a stage for parties the gossip columns covered. She left for America in 1939 and died in Mexico in 1980, her ashes scattered over the volcano Popocatépetl.
She was born on 16 June 1894 in Warsaw — the year and the name have both been disputed, partly because she rewrote them herself; recent archival work gives Tamara Rosa Hurwitz, while she used Tamara Gurwik-Górska. Raised between Warsaw and St Petersburg in a prosperous family, she married the Polish lawyer Tadeusz Łempicki at Tsarskoye Selo on 30 December 1915.
The revolution ended that life in 1917: the Cheka — the Bolshevik secret police — arrested Tadeusz, Tamara got him out, and the couple fled through Copenhagen and London to Paris in 1918, where their daughter Kizette was born the next year. Selling the family jewellery could not last, so she trained fast — under the painter Maurice Denis and, decisively, the Cubist teacher André Lhote at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, whose 'soft Cubism' of rounded, volumetric figures she sharpened into a style of her own.
She first showed at the Salon d'Automne, Paris's big annual juried exhibition, in 1922, and through the twenties built the manner that made her: figures modelled like machined metal, drapery with the sheen of sheet steel, city backgrounds compressed into grey prisms, and a palette of greys, silvers and one saturated accent. Critics called it a cold sensuality; buyers called it flattering. Dukes, bankers and their wives sat for her at prices she set high on principle.
In 1929 the German fashion magazine Die Dame commissioned a cover self-portrait. She painted herself at the wheel of a green Bugatti in a leather helmet and grey gloves — a car she did not own; she drove a small yellow Renault — and the image became Art Deco's best-known painting: speed, money, autonomy and polish in one frame. The name Art Deco itself descends from the Paris exposition of 1925, the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs; she is the movement's face in painting more than any other artist.
The life was part of the work. Divorced from Tadeusz in 1928, she built the studio-apartment at 7 rue Méchain in 1929–30 — her sister Adrienne Gorska the architect of record with interiors in the manner of Robert Mallet-Stevens, chrome and grey glass throughout — and ran it as gallery, salon and set. Her affairs with women and men were conducted in public and painted: the nudes of Rafaela, made in the late 1920s, are among the era's frankest.
In 1934 she married Baron Raoul Kuffner, a Habsburg-era title attached to a collector who had been a client first. Reading Europe correctly, the couple left for the United States in 1939 — Los Angeles, then New York — where 'the baroness with a brush' painted, showed, and watched her style fall completely out of fashion after the war. Abstract Expressionism had no room for chrome.
Kuffner died in 1961; she moved to Houston in 1963 to be near Kizette, and in 1974 to Cuernavaca, Mexico. She lived just long enough to see the revival begin — the 1972 Paris exhibition that returned her to view, and the collectors (Andy Warhol among the admirers) who drove her prices back up. She died in her sleep in Cuernavaca on 18 March 1980, and at her request her ashes were scattered from a helicopter over the volcano Popocatépetl.
Born on 16 June in Warsaw. She would revise both the date and the name; the archives disagree with her memoirs.
Marries the lawyer Tadeusz Łempicki at Tsarskoye Selo on 30 December.
After the revolution and Tadeusz's arrest, the family flees Russia through Copenhagen and London to Paris.
First shows at the Salon d'Automne, after training under Maurice Denis and André Lhote at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.
Divorces Tadeusz Łempicki as the portrait career peaks.
Paints Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti as a cover for Die Dame, and begins the chrome-and-glass studio at 7 rue Méchain with her sister Adrienne Gorska as architect.
Marries Baron Raoul Kuffner, collector first, husband second.
Leaves Paris for the United States as war approaches.
A Paris exhibition begins the Art Deco revival that returns her to fashion in her own lifetime.
Dies in her sleep in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on 18 March; her ashes are scattered from a helicopter over Popocatépetl.
Art movement · 1907–1914
Trained in Paris under Andre Lhote, whose rounded, volumetric 'soft Cubism' she sharpened into her Art Deco manner - the compressed prism cityscapes behind her portraits keep the Cubist scaffolding visible. She was a product of the movement's teaching studios rather than a member of its inner circle.
A Polish painter, born in Warsaw in 1894, who arrived in Paris in 1918 as a refugee from the Russian Revolution and became the defining portraitist of Art Deco — machine-smooth society portraits and nudes painted between 1922 and 1939, in a style she built from André Lhote's 'soft Cubism' and the porcelain-smooth classicism of Ingres. A Broadway musical about her, Lempicka, opened in 2024.
Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti, 1929, painted as a cover for the German fashion magazine Die Dame: the artist at the wheel in a leather helmet and grey gloves, all chrome light and speed. She did not own a Bugatti — she drove a small yellow Renault — which is the point: the image was an advertisement for the woman she had invented.
She is its painter more than anyone. The movement took its later name from the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs, and her polished, metallic figures — made in Paris between 1922 and 1939, and shown from the Salon d'Automne on — are what Art Deco looks like in portraiture. Even her studio at 7 rue Méchain, designed with her architect sister Adrienne Gorska, was a Deco set piece of chrome and grey glass.
From 1929, at 7 rue Méchain in the 14th arrondissement — a studio-apartment she commissioned with her sister, the architect Adrienne Gorska, its interiors in the chrome-and-glass manner of Robert Mallet-Stevens. The building stands and is viewable from the street. Before that she lived and worked near Montparnasse from her 1918 arrival.
In her sleep on 18 March 1980 at her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, aged eighty-five, with her daughter Kizette beside her in her final months. At her request her ashes were scattered from a helicopter over the crater of the volcano Popocatépetl — a last set piece she planned herself.
Associated with · 1920
Trained in Paris under Andre Lhote, whose rounded, volumetric 'soft Cubism' she sharpened into her Art Deco manner - the compressed prism cityscapes behind her portraits keep the Cubist scaffolding visible. She was a product of the movement's teaching studios rather than a member of its inner circle.
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