The dazzling life story of the quintessential painter of the Art Deco twenties - as she told it to her own daughter

Illustrated with vibrant colour reproductions of Lempicka's finest works, and exclusive family photos. Out of print for ten years, now back in print in a handsome yet affordable hardcover edition. This edition includes a new chapter about Lempicka's legacy by her granddaughter and great-granddaughter. We've entered the centennial of the 1920s, and interest in Lempicka is high: her paintings continue to smash auction records, and her life is the subject of a new musical.

An attractive new hardcover edition of the classic biography of Tamara de Lempicka, whose paintings defined Art Deco and whose life epitomised the Jazz Age.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed the mad glories of the 1920s on the printed page, Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980) captured them on canvas. A seductive Garbo-esque beauty with an irresistible force of personality, this refugee of the Russian Revolution successively conquered Paris, Hollywood, and New York with coruscating portraits of the world's rich and famous. Her Art Deco paintings earned for her a life more fabulously excessive than anything Fitzgerald dreamed of.

Passion by Design, authored by Tamara de Lempicka's own daughter, is an intimate look at a fascinating personality, and remains the best account of her life and work. This new edition is illustrated with vibrant colour reproductions of her finest paintings, as well as exclusive photographs from family albums. An additional chapter by Victoria de Lempicka, the artist's granddaughter, explores the ever-evolving legacy of Tamara de Lempicka, from the record eight-figure price fetched by her painting La Tunique Rose in November 2019 to the new musical based on her life.

About the Author:

Baroness Kizette de Lempicka-Foxhall, the daughter of Tamara de Lempicka, enjoyed an unequalled firsthand knowledge of her mother's life and exclusive access to her papers.

Freewheeling. Tamara de Lempicka, icon of Art Deco

Tamara de Lempicka (1896 1980) lived art in the fast lane. With an appetite for glamour and fame as much as Left Bank bohemianism, she fled her native Russia after the Bolshevik revolution and set about taking Paris by storm. Her prolific, monumental oeuvre remains one of the most vivid documents of 1920s Art Deco. 

De Lempicka s style deployed cool colors and tight, post-cubist forms into an at once neoclassical and voluptuous figuration. Her subjects, often nude, are sensual, aloof, and powerful. Bedecked in seductive light and textures, they command our attention but typically avert their gaze with an aspect of haughty grandeur. Her subjects include both high-society patrons and progressive portraits of emancipated and lesbian women, such as Women Bathing, Portrait of Suzy Solidor, and her notorious Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti, showing Tamara behind the wheel. A vision of speed, sophistication, and independence, the work was commissioned for the cover of German magazine Die Dame, which defined de Lempicka as the epitome of women s liberation. 

Through some of her finest, most compelling portraits, this introduction to de Lempicka explores the artist s unique visual language and its privileged place not only in the annals of interwar art but also in the history of female artists and in our collective consciousness of the Roaring Twenties.

About the series:

Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:

- a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
- a concise biography
- approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Tamara de Lempicka and the changing aspects of femininity and masculinity

As the "Goddess of the Automobile Age", Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980) stood at the centre of the sophisticated Paris art world of the Twenties and Thirties. Her love for beautiful women, elegant automobiles and the modern metropolis provided not only motifs for her pictures, but also influenced her artistic style.

Simultaneously with her career as artist, Tamara de Lempicka pioneered a new image of life on the screen, evident in the new, self-confident woman and the changing aspects of femininity and masculinity. The same sense of style was reflected in a futuristic cult of speed, domestic design forms promulgated by the Bauhaus, and the dandyism of a George Brummell. Tamara de Lempicka’s best-known painting, "Self-Portrait, or Tamara in a Green Bugatti", presents the artist as a female dandy brimming with cool elegance.

Whether as an Art-Déco artist, a post-Cubist or a Neoclasissist, de Lempicka struck the taste of a cosmopolitan (and wealthy) public that found its own image reflected in her work.

About the Series:

Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art Series features:

• a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
• a concise biography
• approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The author:

Gilles Néret (1933–2005) was an art historian, journalist, writer and museum correspondent. He organized several art retrospectives in Japan and founded the SEIBU museum and the Wildenstein Gallery in Tokyo. He directed art reviews such as L'Œil and Connaissance des Arts and received the Elie Faure Prize in 1981 for his publications. His TASCHEN titles include Salvador Dalí: The Paintings, Matisse, and Erotica Universalis.

Посмотреть русскоязычное издание книги Lempicka - Лемпицка

Goddess of the Automobile Age

The changing aspects of femininity and masculinity

Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980) stood at the center of the sophisticated Paris art world of the 1920s and 30s. Her love for beautiful women, elegant automobiles, and the modern metropolis provided not only motifs for her pictures, but also influenced her artistic style.

Simultaneously with her career as artist, Tamara de Lempicka pioneered a new image of life on the screen, evident in the new, self-confident woman and the changing aspects of femininity and masculinity. The same sense of style was reflected in a futuristic cult of speed, domestic design forms promulgated by the Bauhaus, and the dandyism of a George Brummell. Tamara de Lempicka’s best-known painting, "Self-Portrait, or Tamara in a Green Bugatti", presents the artist as a female dandy brimming with cool elegance.

Whether as an Art-Déco artist, a post-Cubist or a Neoclasissist, de Lempicka struck the taste of a cosmopolitan (and wealthy) public that found its own image reflected in her work.

About the Series:
Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:

• a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist
• approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions
• a concise biography

У Тамары де Лемпицка - польской и американской художницы, звезды межвоенного времени, было все, что сделало ее символом своей эпохи, элитой того времени, одной из завсегдатаев отеля "Риц" в Париже или Гранд-отеля в Монте-Карло. Женщина-автомобиль, автомобиль-женщина… Где начинается одно и заканчивается другое? Что за отношения были у них друг с другом и с мужчинами? Трудно сказать. Такая постановка вопроса вызывает очень противоречивые чувства, столь характерные для ее творчества. И невозможно избавиться от зыбкого ощущения, что ты уже близок к разгадке тайны, и вдруг - увы! - нужно все начинать сначала: даже исходные данные оказываются неверны. Например, в действительности у нее никогда не было "бугатти", был только маленький ярко-желтый "рено". Однако характерно, что она говорила: "Я всегда одевалась в соответствии с автомобилем, и автомобиль подбирала в соответствии с собой".

Тамара де Лемпицка использовала любую возможность для достижения успеха, не упуская ни единого случая сделать себе имя. Она, прежде всего, определила свое место и выбрала свой стиль: не авангард с его неопределенностью и переменчивостью, а тонкую смесь посткубизма и модного неоклассицизма с легким налетом Энгра для удовлетворения не только своих эротических желаний, но и сладострастных мечтаний буржуазии, ее будущих денежных покупателей.

Другим не менее важным решением был выбор моделей: только элита могла занять достойное место на ее полотнах. Она всегда была готова идти на встречу с покупателем, с моделью или с другом. Лемпицка - завсегдатай светской хроники, участница вечеринок творческой богемы, ей приписывают бисексуальные романы с известными людьми…, автор известной картины "Прекрасная Рафаэла".

Посмотреть англоязычное издание книги Лемпицка - Lempicka

The smoothly metallic portraits, nudes and still lifes of Tamara de Lempicka encapsulate the spirit of Art Deco and the Jazz Age, and reflect the elegant and hedonistic life-style of a wealthy, glamorous and privileged elite in Paris between the two World Wars.

Combining a formidable classical technique with elements borrowed from Cubism, de Lempicka’s art represented the ultimate in fashionable modernity while looking back for inspiration to such master portraitists as Ingres and Bronzino.

This book celebrates the sleek and streamlined beauty of her best work in the 1920s and 30s. It traces the extraordinary life story of this talented and glamorous woman from turn of the century Poland and Tsarist Russia, through to her glorious years in Paris and the long years of decline and neglect in America, until her triumphant rediscovery in the 1970s when her portraits gained iconic status and world-wide popularity.