This Artist Didn’t Want to Be Identified As a Mother
But maybe not for the reasons you think
Tamara de Lempicka was an aristocrat in Russia in 1917 when the Revolution began and the tide turned against the upper class. After her husband was imprisoned, she offered her favors to a powerful person to secure his release, according to curators of an exhibition currently at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Then the pair fled to Paris, where she took art classes from two renowned painters, but quickly surpassed her teachers.
She later claimed her artwork inaugurated the Art Deco movement, which might be an exaggeration. Yet she was noticed at the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, which gave its name to the style. In 1927, she won a major award for the painting above of her daughter Kizette. At first, she titled it simply “On the Balcony,” because, according to a note I read at the exhibition, she didn’t want to be identified as a mother.
When I read that note, and another that said she introduced her daughter as her little sister later, when she moved to the U.S. in 1939, I laughed and jumped to an old-fashioned conclusion. I assumed she lied because she wanted people to think she was younger. I assumed it was an attempt to make herself more attractive to men.
