Bert Lown's Hotel Biltmore Orch. - You're The One I Care For, 1930

Bert Lown & His Hotel Biltmore Orchestra, voc. Elmer Feldkamp - You're The One I Care For, Victor 1930

NOTE: In the slideshow are photographs and paintings of the great Polish painter of Art Deco era, Tamara de LEMPICKA (Łempicka) (née Maria Górska) (May 16, 1898 March 18, 1980 in Warsaw, Poland or Moscow, Russian Federation.

She was born into a wealthy and prominent Polish family. Her father was Boris Górski, a Polish lawyer of a Jewish origin, and her mother, Malwina Dekler, a Polish socialite. Maria (Tamara) attended boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland, and spent the winter of 1911 with her grandmother in Italy, where she had her first encounter with the Great Masters of Italian painting. In 1912, her parents divorced and Maria went to live with her wealthy Aunt Stefa in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1913, at the age of fifteen, Maria spotted in opera the man she became determined to marry. She promoted her campaign through her well-connected uncle and in 1916 she married Tadeusz Łempicki —a well-known ladies' man and lawyer by title, who was tempted by the significant dowry. In 1917, during the Russian Revolution, Tadeusz was arrested for his anti-bolshevic conspiracy. Maria searched the prisons for him and with the help of the Swedish konsul whose price of helping was the relationship with her - she secured his release. They traveled to Paris, where Maria's family had also escaped, joining the fate of numerous upper-class refugees from the Bolshevic paradise.

In Paris they lived from selling family jewels, while Tadeusz proved unwilling or unable to find suitable work provoking Tamara (who in the meantime gave birth to their daughter, Kizette) serach for the source of her familys maintenance in painting. Under the guidance of two great French painters: Andre Lhote and Maurice Denis, she developed quickly to join the group of artists, later classified as „Art Deco" - its name deriving from exhibition of their works which were displayed among other „arts decoratifs" in Paris in 1925. After her first major show in Milan, Italy in 1925, under the sponsorship of Count Emmanuele Castelbarco, de Lempicka was soon the most fashionable portrait painter of her generation among the haute bourgeoisie and aristocracy, painting duchesses and grand dukes and socialites. In 1929, she painted her iconic work "Auto-Portrait" (Tamara in the Green Bugatti) for the cover of the German fashion magazine "Die Dame". As summed up by the magazine "Auto-Journal" in 1974, "the self-portrait of Tamara de Lempicka is a real image of the independent woman who asserts herself. Her hands are gloved, she is helmeted, and inaccessible; a cold and disturbing beauty [through which] pierces a formidable being—this woman is free!".

After divorcing Tadeusz, who at last found his repose in the arms of pharmacy business heiress in Warsaw, she married her lover, a Hungarian tycoon, Baron Kuffner, in 1933. He took her out of her quasi-bohemian life and finally secured her place in high society again, with a title to boot. She repaid him by portraying some of his lovers (her famous painting „Nana de Harrera") and finally by convincing him to sell many of his estates in Eastern Europe and move his money to Switzerland. In 1938, a few months before the onset of World War II, they were on the ocean, sailing towards Ellis Island Immigration Office in New York.

Alas, in the United States where the great revolution in painting, was just being prepered by young artists such as Jackson Pollock, Man Ray or Andy Warhol, de Lampitzka's late Parisian burgeois' portraits were not seriously acclaimed. Her works seemed to be old fashioned as well as and she herself - with all her perls and diamonds, which she had on her from dawn to dusk - was treated as „a funny baroness from Eastern Europe". When she eventually adopted a new style, using palette knife instead of brushes, she was not well-received either. Her last exhibition was in 1962 at the Iolas Galery, wfter which De Lempicka determined never to show her work again, and retired from active life as a professional artist.

Her art was discoverd again in 1968, in Europe, by a group of young Parisian artists and art promoters, who were looking for some good collection to start with their just-opening gallery. One of them called at Tamara de Lempitzkas phoine numer, he took from the telephone directory. She just happened to be in Paris at the time and she very politely admitted thhe young men in her prewar Parisian home at rue Mechain. She agreed to sell or to present them many of her paintings she kept in her attic. Today her paintings, auctioned at the Sothebys, never start with prices less than 4-6 million dollars. Lempicka died in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in 1980 and according to her will, her ashes were scattered from helicopter over her beloved volcano, El Popo.

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[slpuca]

On June 4 a large retrospective exposition with 88 of the works of Tamara de Lempicka will be inaugurated in Mexico City Bellas Artes palace.

Unfortunatly she wasn't happy here

[240252]

Hi Slpuca, I have known about the exhibition in Mexico City from my Mexican friend quite a few months now and I was preparing myself to go for the very opening ceremony. But now I know I won't be in time with my other obligations so I am VERY VERY sorry I'll miss that oportunity. Will you be there?

[cemeterydude]

The notes were absolutely fascinating! Is there a movie in production at the moment? I can imagine one of today's divas in a musical story about her incredible life! Thank you, 240252!!

[240252]

No, the film about her has not been made yet but the works are in progress

[Corrie121]

What a story!!! When I viewed the video, I wondered who the talented artist could be. These are wonderful illustrations, and It does not surprise me that they sell for enormous sums of money.

The vagaries of life are often so strange, and her story adequately reflects this.

Thank you for everything.

P.S.

I had a Polish friend whose name was Tadeusz Ficek. He was an officer in the Polish Navy. He fought with the Royal Navy in WW2.

What is the English translation of "Tadeusez"?

Regards,

Corrie.

[240252]

Hi Corrie, thanks for your lovely comment! International version of "Tadeusz" is Thaddeus. In private, Tamara used to call her husband with a French diminutive Thadé.

[DoubleDutchBust]

s~p~l~e~n~d~i~d

indeed

hasony3 0:11

heart in mind~

[hassony3]

Splendid! Two paintings that I've never seen before!! The beautiful melody fades; Tamara takes over completely! Please Doctor, could you contact Jerzy? Six comments to his Pardon Pardon Senora site were impossible to register, and the seventh from his Amapola site. Just "pending" and then lost. Five personal letters, no trace that they were reached. Maybe HE is blocking me and doesn't really want me to paint his glamorous mother?? No problem. How is my membership in the RV club?

[slpuca]

.

Unfortunatlly I will not be at the opening ceremony, but of course I will attend.

How can I miss it? She is superb

If by any chance you manage to have  some spare time pls let me know it will be an honour to meet with you in person.

Bienvenido a Mexico.

[Corrie121]

Thank you for your reply to my query.

Regards,

Corrie.

[240252]

Genia, what a great prophecy.!.. Well, Iet us believe your good spells aro going to work...