Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980), the Polish artist whose bold Art Deco style so perfectly captured the spirit of the Jazz Age, was born 120 years ago today.
She is the subject of Google's latest Doodle, which foregrounds the high-fashion flappers, shiny new automobiles and orchids that became instantly recognisable motifs in her own work.
"I live life in the margins of society, and the rules of normal society don’t apply to those who live on the fringe," she said of herself.
Born Maria Gorksa in Warsaw, the future "Baroness of the Brush" was the daughter of Russian Jewish attorney Boris Gurwik-Gorski and socialite Malvina Decler.
She painted her first portrait in pastels aged just 10, a younger sister posing for her, before attending boarding school in Laussane, Switzerland, an experience she detested.
Google Doodles
97 show all Google Doodles
1/97 Tamara de Lempicka Google Doodle celebrating Tamara de Lempicka Google
2/97 Maria Reiche Google Doodle celebrating Maria Reiche Google
3/97 Georges Melies Google Doodle celebrating Georges Melies Google
4/97 Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss Google Doodle celebrating Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss Google
5/97 Fanny Blankers-Koen Google Doodle celebrating Fanny Blankers-Koen Google
6/97 Omar Sharif Google Doodle celebrating Omar Sharif Google
7/97 Maya Angelou Google Doodle celebrating Maya Angelou Google
8/97 John Harrison Google Doodle celebrating John Harrison Google
9/97 Hannah Glasse Google Doodle celebrating Hannah Glasse Google
10/97 Katsuko Saruhashi Google Doodle celebrating Katsuko Saruhashi Google
11/97 Guillermo Haro Google Doodle celebrating Guillermo Haro Google
12/97 Sir William Henry Perkin Google Doodle celebrating Sir William Henry Perkin Google
13/97 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Google Doodle celebrating Gabriel Garcia Marquez Google
14/97 Holi Google Doodle celebrating Holi Google
15/97 St. David's Day Google Doodle celebrating St. David's Day Google
16/97 Carter G Woodson Google Doodle celebrating Carter G Woodson Google
17/97 Wilder Penfield Google Doodle celebrating Wilder Penfield Google
18/97 Virginia Woolf Google Doodle celebrating Virginia Woolf Google
19/97 Sergei Eisenstein Google Doodle celebrating Sergei Eisenstein Google
20/97 Winter Solstice Google Doodle celebrating Winter Solstice Google
21/97 St Andrew's Day Google Doodle celebrating St Andrew's Day Google
22/97 Gertrude Jekyll Google Doodle celebrating Gertrude Jekyll Google
23/97 Children's Day 2017 Google Doodle celebrating Children's Day 2017 Google
24/97 Cornelia Sorabji Google Doodle celebrating Cornelia Sorabji Google
25/97 Pad Thai Google Doodle celebrating Pad Thai Google
26/97 Jackie Forster Google Doodle celebrating Jackie Forster Google
27/97 Halloween 2017 Google Doodle celebrating Halloween 2017 Google
28/97 Studio for Electronic Music Google Doodle celebrating the Studio for Electronic Music Google
29/97 Selena Quintanilla Google Doodle celebrating Selena Quintanilla Google
30/97 Olaudah Equiano Google Doodle celebrating Olaudah Equiano Google
31/97 Fridtjof Nansen Google Doodle celebrating Fridtjof Nansen Google
32/97 Amalia Hernandez Google Doodle celebrating Amalia Hernandez Google
33/97 Dr Samuel Johnson Google Doodle celebrating Dr Samuel Johnson Google
34/97 Sir John Cornforth Google Doodle celebrating Sir John Cornforth Google
35/97 British Sign Language Google Doodle celebrating British Sign Language Google
36/97 Eduard Khil Google Doodle celebrating Eduard Khil Google
37/97 James Wong Howe Google Doodle celebrating James Wong Howe Google
38/97 Eiko Ishioka Google Doodle celebrating Eiko Ishioka Google
39/97 Eva Ekeblad Google Doodle celebrating Eva Ekeblad Google
40/97 Fourth of July Google Doodle celebrating Fourth of July Google
41/97 Wimbledon Championship Google Doodle celebrating Wimbledon Google
42/97 Victor Hugo Google Doodle celebrating Victor Hugo Google
43/97 Google Doodle celebrating Oskar Fischinger Google Doodle celebrating Oskar Fischinger Google
44/97 UK General Election 2017 Google celebrates the UK General Election Google
45/97 Zaha Hadid Google celebrates the acclaimed architect for becoming the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize on this day in 2004 Google
46/97 Richard Oakes Google Doodle celebrating Richard Oakes' 75 birthday Google
47/97 Google Doodle celebrating the Antikythera Mechanism Google Doodle celebrating the Antikythera Mechanism Google
48/97 Ferdinand Monoyer The famous French ophthalmologist, who invented the eye test, would have celebrated his 181st birthday today Google
49/97 Google Doodle celebrating Giro d'Italia's 100th Anniversary Google Doodle celebrating Giro d'Italia's 100th Anniversary Google
50/97 Google Doodle celebrating Nasa's Cassini probe Google Doodle celebrating Nasa's Cassini probe Google
51/97 Google Doodle celebrating Fazlur Rahman Khan Google Doodle celebrating Fazlur Rahman Khan Google
52/97 Google Doodle celebrating Sergei Diaghilev Google Doodle celebrating Sergei Diaghilev Google
53/97 Google Doodle celebrating St. Patrick's Day Google Doodle celebrating St. Patrick's Day Google
54/97 Google Doodle celebrating Holi Festival Google Doodle celebrating Holi Festival Google
55/97 Google Doodle celebrating St. David's Day Google Doodle celebrating St. David's Day Google
56/97 Abdul Sattar Edhi Google Doodle of Abdul Sattar Edhi on February 28 2017 Google
57/97 Seven earth-sized exoplanets discovered Google Doodle celebrates Nasa's discovery of seven earth-sized exoplanets in new solar system Google
58/97 Bessie Coleman Google Doodle honours the first African American woman to get an international pilot licence on her 125th birthday Google
59/97 Caroling Google Doodle celebrates Christmas caroling Google
60/97 Today's Google Doodle features activist Steve Biko Google
61/97 Walter Cronkite Google celebrates Walter Cronkite's 100th birthday
62/97 Ladislao José Biro Google celebrates Ladislao José Biro 117th birthday
63/97 Google Google celebrates its 18th birthday
64/97 The history of tea in Britain Google celebrates the 385th anniversary of tea in the UK
65/97 Autumnal equinox 2016 Google marks the start of fall
66/97 Paralympics 2016 Google marks the start of the Paralympic Games 2016
67/97 Nettie Stevens Google celebrates Nettie Stevens 155th birthday
68/97 Father's Day 2016 Google celebrates Father's Day
69/97 Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Google celebrates Elizabeth Garrett Anderson 180th birthday
70/97 Earth Day 2016 Google celebrates Earth Day
71/97 Ravi Shankar Google marks Pandit Ravi Shankar's 96th birthday
72/97 Olympic Games in 1896 Google are celebrates the 120th anniversary of the modern Olympic Games in 1896
73/97 World Twenty20 final Google celebrates the 2016 World Twenty20 cricket final between the West Indies and England with a doodle Google
74/97 William Morris Google celebrates William Morris' 182 birthday with a doodle showcasing his most famous designs Google
75/97 St Patrick's Day 2016 Googlle celebrates St Patrick's Day on 17 March
76/97 Caroline Herschel Google marks Caroline Herschel's 266th birthday Google
77/97 Clara Rockmore Google celebrates Clara Rockmore's 105th birthday
78/97 International Women's Day 2016 #OneDayIWill video marks International Woman's Day on 8 March
79/97 St David's Day 2016 Google marks St David's Day Google
80/97 Leap Year 2016 Google celebrates Leap Day on 28 February 2 Google
81/97 Lantern Festival 2016 Google celebrates the last day of the Chinese New Year celebrations with a doodle of the Lantern Festival Google
82/97 Stethoscope Inventor, René Laennec Google celebrate's René Laennec's 235th birthday
83/97 Valentine's Day 2016 Google celebrates Valentine's Day with a romantic Doodle
84/97 Dmitri Mendeleev Google celebrate Dmitri Mendeleev's 182nd birthday
85/97 "The televisor" demonstartion Google Doodle celebrates 90 years since the first demonstration of television or "the televisor" to the public
86/97 Professor Scoville Google marks Professor Scoville’s 151st birthday
87/97 Sophie Taeuber-Arp Google marks Sophie Taeuber-Arp's 127th birthday
88/97 Charles Perrault Google celebrates author Charles Perrault's 388th birthday
89/97 Mountain of Butterflies discovery Google celebrates the 41st anniversary of the discovery of the Mountain of Butterflies
90/97 Winter Solstice 2015 Google celebrate the Winter Solstice
91/97 St Andrew's Day 2015 Google marks St Andrew's Day with doodle featuring Scotland's flag and Loch Ness monster
92/97 41st anniversary of the discovery of 'Lucy' Google marks the 41st anniversary of the discovery of 'Lucy', the name given to a collection of fossilised bones that once made up the skeleton of a hominid from the Australopithecus afarensis species, who lived in Ethiopia 3.2 million years ago
93/97 George Boole Google marks George Boole's 200th birthday
94/97 Halloween 2015 Google celebrates Halloween using an interactive doodle game "Global Candy Cup"
95/97 Prague Astronomical Clock Google celebrates the 605th anniversary of the Prague Astronomical Clock, one of the oldest functioning timepieces in the world
96/97 Autumnal Equinox 2015 Google marks the autumnal equinox on 23 September
97/97 International Women's Day 2018 Google marks IWD with a doodle featuring a dozen female artists from 12 different countries
Leaving to tour Italy with her grandmother, it was here that Tamara first developed a fascination with Renaissance painting.
Completing her formal education, however reluctantly, she swiftly met and fell for Polish lawyer Tadeusz Lempicki, the pair marrying in St Petersburg, Russia, in 1916.
A year later Lempicki was arrested by the Cheka following the Russian Revolution and the couple were forced to leave for Copenhagen, ultimately taking refuge in Paris.
Selling family jewelry to make ends meet, Lempicka gave birth to a daughter, Kizette, then turned to painting professionally to make ends meet, practising with portraits of the infant and a neighbour.
After studying under Maurice Denis and Andre Lhote at the Academie de la Grand Chaumiere, her breakthrough came when her work was exhibited at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, where she was spotted by American fashion journalists from Harper's Bazaar.
Exhibiting in Milan, Italy, she met the Italian poet and soldier Gabriele d'Annunzio, whose portrait she hoped to paint, though he was rather more intent on seducing her than sitting still.
In 1928, as her reputation continued to grow, she divorced Tadeusz and became the mistress of Baron Raoul Kuffner, an art collector who had commissioned her to paint his then-girlfriend Nana de Herrera, a Spanish dancer. Tamara undertook the project with malice and produced an unflattering result, taking Herrera's place and eventually marrying Baron Kuffner in Zurich in 1934.
Her self-portrait, Tamara in a Green Bugatti, was instantly iconic when it appeared on the cover of German fashion magazine Die Dame in 1929.
Her first American show at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh was a hit but the proceeds were immediately wiped out by the Wall Street Crash. By now her international reputation was assured anyway and she spent the 1930s painting such celebrities as King Alfonso XIII of Spain and Queen Elizabeth of Greece, her idiosyncratic post-Cubist/neoclassical style much in demand.
Settling permanently in Los Angeles with the outbreak of the Second World War having sold off Baron Kuffner's properties in Hungary for fear of the Nazis, Tamara and her husband remained popular socialites but changing times saw her work fall out of fashion, overtaken by abstract expressionism.
Baron Kuffner died of a heart attack aboard an ocean liner in 1961 and De Lempicka retired to Houston, Texas, with Kizette and her husband, a geologist.
Tamara de Lempicka lived out her final years in Cuernavaca, Mexico, the final destination in an extraordinarily well-travelled life, passing away in her sleep on 18 March 1980. She remains forever associated with the glamour and opulence of the Roaring Twenties, her work conveying the excitement of the age on canvas as distinctively as F Scott Fitzgerald had in prose.
TAMARA de Lempicka thrilled the world in the 1920s and 30s with her bold works of art and was dubbed "The Baroness with a Brush".
A Google Doodle is celebrating the iconic Polish painter on what would have been her 120th birthday – here is her story.
Getty - Contributor Glamorous Tamara de Lempicka was nicknamed "The Baronness with a Brush"
Who was Tamara de Lempicka?
Tamara de Lempicka was born Maria Górska on May 16, 1898, in Warsaw, Poland.
The daughter of a Russian Jewish lawyer and a Polish socialite, she made her first portrait of her younger sister at the age of 10.
Her love of art blossomed when she spent a summer in Italy with her grandmother, developing a love for the Italian Renaissance painters.
She travelled to Saint Petersburg in 1915 to visit a wealthy aunt following her parents' divorce, where she fell in love with Tadeusz Łempicki – they married the following year.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 made Lempicka and her husband refugees, and they fled from St Petersburg to Paris where the rest of her husband's family had sought refuge.
It was there that she began her formal artistic training at the height of post-cubism.
Google The Google Doodle marking Lempicka on her 120th birthday
She went on to document the 1920s in a truly unique style, blending elements of refined cubism with neoclassical elements.
Lempicka divorced Tadeusz in 1928 and met Baron Raoul Kuffner, becoming his mistress.
They went on to marry in 1934 following the death of his first wife, and her new position led to the coining of the nickname "The Baroness with a Brush".
It was in the 1930s that Lempicka's career reached its peak, and she developed a penchant for glamorous celebrity portraits and her highly stylised nudes.
Getty - Contributor Lempicka's career reached its glamorous peak in the 1930s
During this period she painted the likes of King Alfonso XIII of Spain and Queen Elizabeth of Greece.
Following the outbreak of World War II, the couple moved to the USA, settling first in Beverly Hills and later in New York.
Baron Kuffner died in 1961 after suffering a heart attack on an ocean liner, and his widow sold many of her possessions and travelled the world by ship.
In 1963 Lempicka moved to Houston, Texas, to be with her only child, a daughter called Kizette from her first marriage.
The artist later moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she died in her sleep on March 18, 1980 – she was 81 years old.
Getty - Contributor Lempicka's love of art was honed as a teenager on a trip to Italy
What is a Google Doodle?
In 1998, the search engine founders Larry and Sergey drew a stick figure behind the second 'o' of Google as a message to that they were out of office at the Burning Man festival and with that, Google Doodles were born.
The company decided that they should decorate the logo to mark cultural moments and it soon became clear that users really enjoyed the change to the Google homepage.
Google Google celebrated the Autumn Equinox with a themed doodle
In that same year, a turkey was added to Thanksgiving and two pumpkins appeared as the 'o's for Halloween the following year.
Now, there is a full team of doodlers, illustrators, graphic designers, animators and classically trained artists who help create what you see on those days.
Among the Doodles published in in 2017 were ones commemorating German scientist Robert Koch, Jan Ingenhousz (who discovered photosynthesis) and the 50th anniversary of kids coding languages being introduced.
Earlier in the year, the search giant celebrated the 2017 Autumn Equinox , which marked the official ending of summer and the coming of autumn.
Google
Boy, this artist lived in a cool period of time.
Wednesday's Google Doodle pays homage to Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka, known for portraits of larger-than-life people in the Roaring Twenties, on what would be her 120th birthday.
Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1898, Lempicka became an art lover at an early age when she spent a summer with her grandmother in Italy and fell in love with great Italian Renaissance painters.
She moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, when her parents divorced, and there she got married before moving to Paris amid the beginning of the Russian revolution. She found herself in a city at the height of post-Cubism and began formal training as an artist under the influence of French painters Maurice Denis and André Lhote.
Lempicka's work included tributes to the Roaring Twenties in her unique style that blended refined cubist styles with late neoclassical. In particular she's known for portraits of artists, stars and aristocrats, who populated the exotic and luxurious art world she lived in.
Lempicka died March 18, 1980, aged 81.
Tamara de Lempicka never stopped challenging expectations. A refugee of the Russian Revolution, she became an icon of the Jazz Age and a celebrated Art Deco painter. Today, on what would have been her 120th birthday, Google pays tribute to Lempicka with a Doodle in her signature style. Here’s what to know about the pioneering Polish artist.
An early love of art
Lempicka was born as Maria Górska in 1898 Warsaw, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire, to a wealthy family. She was sent to boarding school in Switzerland and toured Italy with her grandmother, where she was exposed to some the greatest works of Renaissance art.
She moved to St. Petersburg in Russia and married, but the very next year, the Russian Revolution forced Lempicki and her husband to flee. They found refuge in Paris.
A pioneering painter
Lempicka became a fixture of Paris’ bohemian art scene. Her paintings, often portraits of her celebrity peers or stylized nudes, merged late cubist and neoclassical techniques to create a metal-like visual style that was distinctively her own. She also incorporated elements of the Roaring Twenties: one of her most famous compositions, Autoportrait (1929), portrays the artist in a sleek green sports car.
“My goal is never to copy,” Lempicka reportedly said. Instead, she sought to “create a new style, clear luminous colors and feel the elegance of the models.”
A visitor looks at Tamara de Lempicka's "Portrait de Majorie Ferry" at Sotheby's in New York on May 1, 2009. Lucas Jackson—Reuters:
Lempicka continued painting long after she moved to the U.S. in 1939, this time fleeing World War II. When she died in Mexico on March 18, 1980, as per her request, her ashes were scattered over a volcano.
“Few artists embodied the exuberant roaring twenties more than Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka,” said Matthew Cruickshank, who drew Wednesday’s Doodle in a style emulating Lempicka’s own. “Her fast paced, opulent lifestyle manifests itself perfectly into the stylized Art-Deco subjects she celebrated in her paintings.”
