GREGOIRE
JEANMONOD
Art and its stories as an inspiration
Tamara de Lempicka
girl in green
1930
Mix our successive influences
Polish raised in Russia and exiled in France during the October Revolution, Tamara de Lempicka became, from Paris to New York, one of the most courted artists of the 1920s and 1930s. A star painter affiliated with the Art Deco movement then in vogue in high society, she embodied – both through her work and her way of life – the modern, free and determined woman, witness to a society in full evolution.
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This status as an icon of the Roaring Twenties is due in particular to her painting, which is both very modern and extremely sensual. Her ambition, she said, was
to produce "works with a style so singular that they would be distinguished among hundreds of others." And it is clear that she succeeded. How ? By constantly associating the different sources of inspiration they have found on their journey. From the Russian icons of her childhood, she kept the oval faces and tight frames. The Italian Renaissance Madonnas she admired in the Louvre inspired the elegant postures and delicate draperies of his models. And from her training in the studio of the cubist painter André Lhote she retained the transcription of volumes into assemblies of geometric shapes.
What we can take away:
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As individuals, our singularity resides in the sum of our experiences and successive encounters. Rather than moving from one source of inspiration to another along our journey, we can add them, merge them, welcome the new ones without forgetting the old ones. It is this crossbreeding that makes the richness of our vision.
