Visit Tamara de Lempicka’s First U.S. Retrospective in San Francisco This October

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Nearly one hundred years after Tamara de Lempicka (1894-1980) first exhibited her work in San Francisco, a sweeping survey of the storied and glamorous artist opens again in the city. This October, at the de Young—part of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco—the show marks the artist’s first U.S. retrospective and illuminates new details about her life.

de Lempicka’s bold, stylized figures have become synonymous with the 1920s, an era characterized by opulence, sophistication, and youthful optimism. She incorporates Art Deco design elements, like geometric facets, tonal contrasts, and city architecture framing idealized faces and flowing, fashionable garments. She sought to create recognizable paintings with a freshness and clarity that set them apart from what she called the “banality” of art she saw around her. And among other Art Deco-era painters like Diego Rivera or Rockwell Kent, who often painted large murals featuring crowds of people, de Lempicka distinguished herself by focusing predominantly on portraits.

The artist’s early life has long been a source of fascination. For years, she was thought to have been born Tamara Rozalia Gurwik-Górska in 1894—although she claimed variously that she was born in 1898, 1900, and 1902—but recent research reveals her birth name was Tamara Rosa Hurwitz. She moved to Saint Petersburg, where she married a prominent Polish lawyer named Tadeusz Łempicki, and then traveled to Paris, where she studied painting. “At the beginning of her career, de Lempicka chose to sign her works using the male declination of her surname, ‘Lempitzky,’ effectively disguising her gender and adding to the confusion surrounding her origin story,” says an exhibition statement.

By 1928, de Lempicka had become the mistress of Baron Raoul Kuffner de Dioszegh, a wealthy art collector, and she divorced from Łempicki in 1931. When Kuffner’s wife died, the artist married Kuffner, and she became known in the press as “The Baroness with a Brush.” The couple moved to the U.S. in 1939, and although her work fell out of fashion during World War II, a 1960s revival of Art Deco style ushered in a comeback. She eventually moved to Mexico in 1974, where she died in 1980.

More than 120 of de Lempicka’s works will go on view in San Francisco, including her most celebrated portraits, early experimental still lifes, rarely seen drawings, and a selection of Art Deco objects from the Fine Arts Museums’ collection. Tamara de Lempicka runs October 12, 2024, to February 9, 2025, after which it will travel to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from March 9 to May 25. Find more on the de Young’s website.

“Brilliance (Bacchante)” (c. 1932), oil on panel, 14 1/4 x 10 5/8 inches. Image courtesy of Rowland Weinstein, Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco

“Portrait of a Man (Thadeusz Łempicki) or Unfinished Portrait of a Man,” (1928), oil on canvas, 51 x 31 7/8 inches. Image courtesy of Centre Pompidou, Paris

“Arums” (1935), oil on canvas, 25 7/8 x 19 3/8 inches. Image courtesy of Centre Pompidou, Paris

“Irene and Her Sister” (1925), oil on canvas, 57 1/2 x 35 1/16 inches. Image courtesy of Irena Hochman Fine Art Ltd., New York

“Saint-Moritz” (1929), oil on panel, 13 3/4 x 10 5/8 inches. Image courtesy of Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans, © Banque d’Images, ADAGP / Art Resource, NY

“Portrait of Ira P.” (1930), oil on panel, 39 3/8 x 25 9/16 inches. Image © 1969 Christie’s Images Limited

Thérèse Bonney, “Tamara de Lempicka working on ‘Portrait of Tadeusz de Łempicki’” (c. 1929), gelatin silver print, 9 3/8 x 7 inches. Image © The Regents of the University of California, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

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