Tamara de Lempicka

With works that exuded cool elegance and sensuality, Tamara de Lempicka helped to define Art Deco.

Capturing the glamour and vitality of 1920s postwar Paris and the cosmopolitan sheen of Hollywood celebrity, Tamara de Lempicka (1894-1980) infused her paintings with a brilliant sense of fashion, design, and the theatrical. The first American museum retrospective of her work, Tamara de Lempicka explores the artist’s distinctive style and unconventional life as she rose to the pinnacle of café society. 

Featuring more than 90 works of art, the exhibition traverses Lempicka’s career from her beginnings in Paris to the decade she spent in New York and Los Angeles in the 1940s. 

Lempicka largely withdrew from the art world in the 1950s and ultimately made Houston her second home. Following several decades of obscurity, she enjoyed a revival of interest in her work, sparked by the 1972 landmark exhibition Tamara de Lempicka de 1925 à 1939, mounted by the Galerie du Luxembourg in Paris. In the years since, her paintings have been avidly collected by celebrities like Elton John, Madonna, and Barbra Streisand, all of whom were attracted to the artist’s carefully groomed image.