Born Tamara Rosalia Gurwik-Gorska in Warsaw, Poland, Tamara de Lempicka has come to be recognized by her epithet, “Baroness with a Brush.” As the daughter of wealthy parents, she was sent to boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland. During one summer, her grandmother took her on a tour of Italy, where she first witnessed the work of Old Masters, which would inspire her passion for art. After her parents’ divorce, she was sent to live with a wealthy aunt in St. Petersburg, and it was here that de Lempicka developed her taste for luxury living. At 18 she was wed to Tadeusz Lempicki. The Russian Revolution forced them to relocate to Paris, where she assumed the name Tamara de Lempicka. She undertook formal training at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, studying under André Lhote. His artistic instruction and encouragement of de Lempicka is arguably one of the single greatest influences on her later iconic visual techniques.
De Lempicka’s unique style, highly stylized with strong influences of cubism and neoclassicism, garnered her the attention of the social elite of Paris, who commissioned portraits. She was soon showing internationally. Within this time, she and Lempicki divorced, and she was soon after commissioned by Baron Raoul Kuffner to paint a portrait of his mistress. During the portraits production, de Lempicka and the Baron grew close and were wed in 1934. World War II saw the Baron and de Lempicka relocate to Hollywood, California. Initially, she continued to undertake prestigious portrait commissions; however, coinciding with the rise of Abstract Expressionism, her work began to fall out of favor. After the sudden death of the Baron on an ocean liner in 1961, she moved to Texas, before finally settling in Cuernavaca, Mexico.