Tamara de Lempicka lived art in the fast lane. With an appetite for glamour and fame as much as Left Bank bohemianism, she fled her native Russia after the Bolshevik revolution and set about taking Paris by storm. Her prolific, monumental oeuvre remains one of the most vivid visual documents of 1920s Art Deco. De Lempickas style deployed cool colours and tight, post-cubist forms into an at once neoclassical and voluptuous figuration. Her subjects are often nude and always sensual, aloof and powerful. Bedecked in seductive light and textures, they command our attention but typically avert their gazes with an attitude of haughty grandeur. They include depictions of both high-society patrons and progressive portraits of emancipated and lesbian women, such as Women Bathing and Portrait of Suzy Solidor. Through some of de Lempickas finest, most compelling portraits, this introduction explores the artists unique visual language and its privileged place not only in the annals of interwar art but also in the history of female artists and our collective consciousness of the Roaring Twenties.
