“Tamara de Lempicka –the queen of modernism” is the title of an exhibition opening at the Vittoriano Museum Complex in Rome.

Tamara de Lempicka (Tamara Łempicka) is one of the most highly regarded artists of the Art Deco style, a classical, symmetrical form which had its peak between 1925-1935.

In France it was known as the Arts Decoratifs and Lempicka was the most memorable artists representing that style.

Tamara de Lempicka  was born in Warsaw in 1898 as Tamara Rozalia Gurwik Gorska. She married a Polish count Tadeusz Lempicki, with whom she fled to Paris following his arrest by the Bolsheviks.

She studied painting at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and Academie Ranson and her first exhibition in Paris was in 1922 at the Paris Salon d’Automne, which brought her immediate success and she changed her name to Tamara de Lempicka.

She quickly rose to fame as the portraitist of the crème of Paris society, which  soon developed into the most fashionable portrait painter of her generation among the haute bourgeoisie and aristocracy, painting duchesses and grand dukes and socialites.

In 1925, she painted her iconic work Auto-Portrait (Tamara in the Green Bugatti) for the cover of the German fashion magazine Die Dame.

She left Paris for the USA fleeing from the threat of WWII. Lempicka died in 1980 in Mexico, where she moved to in 1978, her ashes have been scattered over the Popocatepetl volcano.

Her works had been presented in the most renowned galleries of the world, many are in private collections. In Poland the artist had only two exhibitions before WWII.

Though several of her works are in Poland, they are not presented to the public.

Tamara Lempicka, as one of the most recognizable artists of the Art Deco has her admirers the world over. Among them is the singer Madonna.

She has lent out her paintings to events and museums. Madonna has also featured Lempicka's artwork in her music videos for Open your Heart, Vogue and Express yourself. 

Other famous collectors include actor Jack Nicholson and singer-actress Barbra Streisand. (ab)