Over thirty paintings by Tamara Lempicka are on display at the National Museum in Krakow. The works were taken from museums and private collections in Europe and the United States. The exhibition was created in collaboration with the artist’s great-granddaughter, Marisa de Łempicka. It was funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

The selection of works allows visitors to trace the artist’s oeuvre from the 1920s to the 1960s. From the well-known portrait paintings and nudes, which are today a symbol of the era and the ‘art déco’ style, through works with socially engaged themes, still lifes, to little-known abstract compositions created in the 1950s and impressionistic paintings with spatula from the 1960s and 1970s.

“This time, art lovers at the National Museum in Krakow will have the opportunity to encounter the works of one of the most outstanding portraitists of the era, a modern and independent woman, a mysterious artist who lived in the belief that the aim of art was solely beauty, confabulating about the place and date of her birth, family, education and her own work,” wrote Minister of Culture and National Heritage Piotr Gliński in a letter read out during the opening of the exhibition.

Almost the only subject of Lempicka’s paintings was the human being. She most often painted aristocrats, representatives of the artistic bohemia and the financial elite of Europe and the USA. Mainly through her portraits, Lempicka created a gallery telling the story of the decadent world between the world wars – the ‘crazy’ 1920s and 1930s – as well as the world of Hollywood stars in the 1940s and 1950s.

The exhibition also features photographic portraits of Lempicka by prominent photographers, which provide an excellent opportunity to confront Lempicka’s self-creation in front of the camera with her painterly vision.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński