Art Deco was one of the first tru­ly inter­na­tion­al styles, influ­enc­ing the design of just about every­thing from build­ings to fur­ni­ture, jew­ellery to fash­ion, and art to every­day objects like radios and vac­u­um clean­ers. It took its name (short for Arts Déco­rat­ifs) from the Expo­si­tion Inter­na­tionale des Arts Déco­rat­ifs et Indus­triels Mod­ernes Arts which was held in Paris in 1925, and which serves as a fair start­ing point to cred­it for the birth of a move­ment. We are slap-bang in the mid­dle of the Roar­ing Twen­ties, the era of the Jazz Age and of flap­pers, of motion pic­tures and the Charleston, of The Great Gats­by and Radio City Music Hall, and whilst this rep­re­sen­ta­tive list smacks of the Unit­ed States, the cul­tur­al vibe was no less felt in Berlin, Paris, Lon­don and Syd­ney. It was an era of eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty and cul­tur­al dynamism and as such, don’t be sur­prised to see this blog return to this peri­od in the future.

Art Deco drew its inspi­ra­tion from such art move­ments as Cubism, Futur­ism, and the influ­ence of the Bauhaus. It played with geo­met­ric motifs and bright, bold colours, and of all the artists pur­su­ing this style, one of the most mem­o­rable and inter­est­ing was Tama­ra de Lem­pic­ka.

Born in Poland in 1898, she lived, after her par­ents divorced, with her wealthy grand­moth­er, who spoiled her with clothes and trav­el. By age 14 she was attend­ing school in Lau­sanne, and hol­i­day­ing in St Peters­burg. All this high liv­ing gave the young girl an idea of how she want­ed to live and what her future should be. Thus, when she found she had a tal­ent for art, she took her­self to Paris to live among the bour­geois and bohemi­an of the Left Bank (where else?). Between the wars, she paint­ed por­traits of the great and the good, and many of East­ern Europe’s exiled nobil­i­ty, bring­ing her crit­i­cal acclaim, social celebri­ty and con­sid­er­able wealth. She was also well-known for her high­ly stylised nudes.

Her icon­ic work exud­ed a con­fi­dence that epit­o­mised the era (see her Self-Por­trait in the Green Bugat­ti, for instance). But let’s look at her Young Lady with Gloves (AKA Girl in the Green Dress), typ­i­cal of her style. It has stream­lined, geo­met­ric shapes and clean, metal­lic sur­faces depict­ing a beau­ti­ful, sophis­ti­cat­ed woman. She exudes a detached aura of supe­ri­or­i­ty, and there is a visu­al­ly strik­ing inter­play of com­po­si­tion­al effects, angu­lar lines, and shad­ing. The unabashed sen­su­al­ism of those nip­ples and that navel vis­i­ble through the fab­ric is pure de Lem­pic­ka. Small won­der that one of her high-pro­file col­lec­tors is inter­na­tion­al super­star, Madon­na, who has fea­tured some of de Lem­pick­a’s works in her own videos, notably Vogue. Push­ing the bound­aries as a fear­less female artist, she was per­haps the Madon­na of her day.