Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980)

Tamara de Lempicka is best known for her Art Deco-styled portraits. Sexy, bedroom-eyed women in stylish dress are rendered in haunting poses perhaps it was her own dramatic life mirrored in her art. Married twice to wealthy men, de Lempicka moved from her native Poland to Russia, and then to Paris.

In 1918, she studied painting at the Académie de la Grand Chaumiere, and was privately tutored by Maurice Denis. In 1925 she exhibited her work at the first Art Deco exhibition in Paris, and established herself by selling many works through the Galerie Colette Weill. After having affairs with more than one wealthy "patron of the arts" she divorced her first husband and married Baron Raoul Kuffner in 1933. They moved to America in 1939, and her work appeared exclusively at many galleries and museums, but her artistic output decreased.

In 1960 she changed her style to abstract art and began creating works with a spatula. After her husband died in 1962, she ceased painting and moved to Mexico. Art Deco enthusiasts and celebrities have collected her works, notably Barbra Streisand and Madonna.