The life and work of Tamara de Lempicka never cease to engage our imagination. More than once has our magazine written about her creations.
Given the latest issue of the magazine is dedicated to the theme of food, this time we would like to show you Tamara by pointing to something else than the widely known portraits and acts, which are today the symbol of the art déco period and style.
Łempicka created still lifes already in the 1920s. In these usually little pieces, she studied light and details with precision, and synthesised them at the same time, by making them shine and giving them a touch of smoothness, as was typical of the art déco craftmanship. In this paintings we sense echoes of her academic training under the tutorage of André Lhote and Maurice Denis. As with her portraits, one recognises cubist influence and sees the attempts to give the painted object a geometrical form.
Tamara de Lempicka seriously began painting still lifes after she had fled the war-time Europe and arrived in Los Angeles. This artistic choice was partly dictated by a lack of portrait commissions. Her still lifes refer to works of the Old Masters, especially Dutch painters, which she symbolically underlined by placing her name on a piece of paper pinned to the painted wall. Not only did it express the artist’s interest for the Old Masters, but it also showed her historical awareness which led her to consciously continue the motif. Fruits laying in white bowls or composed on the table often emerge from the black or flat background by means of light.
This kind of succinct still life makes us also think of the classical modern painting and Paul Cézanne’s works in the same genre, created since 1870s. But the style is not an attempt at pastiche or following someone. All of her still lifes have a unique characteristic which can also be sensed in the portraits, social-themed paintings and abstract works – it is the smoothness, lightness and the ease with which the portrayed object is moved from reality to the surreal world of art déco.
