Tamara de Lempicka is having a banner year, which is rather remarkable considering she died 44 years ago. In addition to the unmissable retrospective art exhibition at the de Young Museum (see our feature in this week's issue), Armani naming her as his muse for his 1920s fashion designs, as well as being the motif of a Google logo commemorating overlooked figures, the artist is also the subject of a new documentary, "The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka and The Art of Survival." It screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival and screens October 26 at the Roxie.
Her biography is as dramatic as her art with the documentary arguing they're inseparable. It was her decadent indulgent lifestyle and relationships with men and women but also the pain she experienced, that inspired her art.
"Each of my paintings is a self-portrait," she said.
It's as if we can understand now why she's so important as a bisexual, Jewish female refugee artist, finally having her breakthrough moment, after virtually been forgotten for decades, under-appreciated, if not ignored, by art critics.
A remarkable life
This groundbreaking documentary discovers documents that confirmed Tamara de Lempicka's birth name was Tamara Rosa Hurwitz, born on June 16, 1894, not May 16, 1898 as once thought. Born in a Polish family of Jewish descent in Warsaw, her entire family converted to Polish Reformed Protestantism, with Tamara baptized a Christian, probably due to fear of pogroms.
The family emigrated to St. Petersburg, Russia where she grew up. Lempicka concealed her Jewish heritage throughout her life, not out of deceit or vanity but because of persecution and anti-Semitism.
Later, when she began painting, she created religious pictures often with Catholic themes to direct attention away from any suspicions about her Jewish ancestry.
She married aristocratic lawyer Tadeusz Lempicki in 1916, with her only daughter Kizette born that same year. He worked for the Czar, was targeted in the Russian Revolution, and jailed. Lempicka rescued him by offering sexual favors to Communist party officials.
They fled to Paris in 1918 as refugees, having left everything behind. Depressed, he chose not to work, so to support the family she used her classical training in art (thanks to her wealthy grandmother) and began painting.
"There are no miracles," she's quoted as saying. "It's only what you make."
Influenced by Old Master/Renaissance paintings (i.e. Botticelli, Caravaggio) as well as European avant-gardes like Cubism and Surrealism, she enjoyed critical and commercial success in the 1920s, becoming a millionaire in 1928.
She held her first solo exhibition in 1925, crowned the high priestess of Art Deco. She produced covers for the German fashion magazine "Die Dame" (akin to "Vogue") including an iconic self-portrait with her blonde bob encased in a cap, while driving a green Bugatti racing car, her gloved hand barely on the steering wheel.
She divorced her husband in 1929 (he tired of her affairs, abuse of cocaine, and listening to Wagner at full volume while painting), but during their marriage she had male and female lovers, often having affairs with her models.
She introduced gender-fluid imagery into her portraits. She began using her feminine name and in 1933 or '34, after their affair, she wed Baron Raoul Kuffner, a Hungarian-Jewish nobleman. They had an open marriage on both sides.
Alarmed by the threat posed by Nazism, for the second time, she started a new life as a refugee, leaving Paris for the U.S. in February 1939, eventually settling in Beverly Hills.
Her great-granddaughter comments how Lempicka, after selling a painting, would buy a diamond bracelet, which she could sew into her clothing when she had to flee, then sell it, using the money to start a new life. She was a born survivor. After the war, her paintings were deemed anachronistic or passe, especially in light of abstract expressionism.
A rich legacy
Lempicka exhibited 12 pictures in San Francisco, 1941 at the Julien Levy Galleries (on Geary Street), eight of which are in the current de Young exhibit.
Critics lambasted the themes of her work (a rich women painting the poor and sentimental religious scenes), though praised her flawless pictorial technique, which led to her no longer publicly showing her work. However, she remained a favorite of the Hollywood social scene, known for her lavish parties.
Her husband died in 1961, with Lempicka moving to Houston to be near her married daughter. Rediscovered as an Art Deco icon in the mid-1970s, she moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico in 1973 where she died in 1980, cantankerous to the end about her unjust fall into obscurity. Her ashes were scattered over the Popocatepetl volcano.
The documentary uses never-before-seen 8mm home movies, archival footage, voiceovers, animation, as well as interviews with family members (her granddaughter Victoria and great-granddaughters Marisa and Cristina) and art historians. The movie is narrated by actress Anjelica Huston, who knew Lempicka.
Filmmaker Julie Rubio is intent on showing how Lempicka was unfairly attacked during her lifetime, because critics and associates didn't know her full story of raising a daughter by herself or being a woman painter (rare in her time) in the very patriarchal art world.
Lempicka constantly reinvented herself to survive physically and economically. As a bisexual, female Jewish artist she was challenging the early and mid-20th century status quo.
Curator Furio Rinaldi declares that because Lempicka was openly bisexual, it is quite fitting that her first American retrospective is being held in San Francisco. She presented her female nudes as subjects rather than objects for the male gaze and injected eroticism into her portraits of wealthy aristocratic women. Rubio sees her as a resilient trailblazer, envisioning a future where people could be and love whatever and whomever they wanted.
In this visually stunning film, Rubio portrays Lempicka ahead of her time, breaking down personal and professional barriers, opening up doors for female artists, "leading them into a world of endless creative choice."
This apologetic captivating documentary reveals the unity of Lempicka's unique life, where she put all her prodigious talent, struggles, turmoil, and truth into every canvas.
'The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka and The Art of Survival' with director/producer Julie Rubio in conversation with G. Allen Johnson. $6.62-$16.62, Oct. 26, 1pm, 3125 16th St.www.roxie.com
www.tamaradoc.com
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