LEMPICKA TAMARA

As the "Goddess of the Automobile Age", Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980)stood at the centre of the sophisticated Paris art world of the Twentiesand Thirties. Her love for beautiful women, elegant automobiles and themodern metropolis provided not only motifs for her pictures, but alsoinfluenced her artistic style. Simultaneously with her career as artist, Tamara de Lempicka pioneered anew image of life on the screen, evident in the new, self-confident womanand the changing aspects of femininity and masculinity. The same sense ofstyle was reflected in a futuristic cult of speed, domestic design formspromulgated by the Bauhaus, and the dandyism of a George Brummell. Tamarade Lempicka's best-known painting, "Self-Portrait, or Tamara in a GreenBugatti", presents the artist as a female dandy brimming with coolelegance. Whether as an Art-Déco artist, a post-Cubist or a Neoclasissist, deLempicka struck the taste of a cosmopolitan (and wealthy) public thatfound its own image reflected in her work.