Tamara Lempicka (1894 Warsaw - 1980 Cuernavaca), Still life with compotier, circa 1963.

oil, canvas, 27 × 35 cm

Provenance:
- Impressionist Modern auction, Christie's NY, 21.08.2010, item 95.
- private collection, Poland

Exhibited:
- "Tamara Lempicka a art déco, Villa la Fleur", Konstancin-Jeziorna, September 17, 2022 - March 12, 2023
- " Tamara Lempicka - a woman on a journey", National Museum in Lublin, March 18 - August 14, 2022
Literature:
- "Tamara Lempicka a art déco. Tradition and Modernity," exhibition catalog, Villla la Fleur, Konstancin-Jeziorna, Warsaw 2022, cat. no. 71, p. 172 (ill.) - Alain Blondel, "Tamara de Lempicka.Catalogue raisonné 1921-1979," Lausanne 1999, p. 409, no. B.454

"La Reneissance praised "a painter of unsurpassed finesse and unsurpassed meticulousness (...). Her painting began with cubism, but has undergone various transformations - neocubism, neorealism, abstraction and figurativeness. Her interiors, still lifes, portraits - all have a unique quality and an elevated, poetic mood." (after L. Claridge, "Tamara Lempicka. Art and Scandal," Warsaw 2022, p. 333.) Lempicka created still lifes as early as the 1920s. In these usually small works, she studied light and the precision of detail, while at the same time synthesizing them, giving them luster and smoothness - typical of the then-popular art déco. As in her portraits, we see influences from Cubism and attempts to give the painted object a geometric form. However, she delved more seriously into the subject of still life after fleeing Europe during World War II and arriving in Los Angeles. In part, this choice was prompted by a decline in commissions for her portraits. Lempicka's still lifes of the time draw heavily from the works of the old Dutch masters, showing the artist's historical awareness - the fruits depicted lying in white bowls or arranged on a table often emerge from a black or "flattened" background with the help of appropriate lighting.