Things to Do: See Tamara de Lempicka at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston

There is a certain striking feel and highly distinctive look to the paintings of Tamara de Lempicka.

Sloe-eyed (mostly) women dressed in the finery of the day (or, in other cases, completely nude), staring off to the side of the painting’s edge with a placid, almost religious reverence. And there’s no shortage of bold colors, stylish fabric folds and high society allure in these works.

Despite being one of the most recognized Art Deco painters during the genre’s heyday of the 1920s and ‘30s, de Lempicka and her work have never been the subject of a major U.S. retrospective, until now. Tamara de Lempicka will run from March 9-May 26 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

“I’m pretty excited about this,” says Alison de Lima Greene, the MFAH’s coordinating curator for this exhibit.

“Many years ago [former MFAH Director] Peter Marzio and I looked at the possibility of doing a Lempicka exhibition, but that came to nothing. Every museum has 30 shows that they consider for every one that they do. So, it had always been in the back of my mind.”

The exhibit includes 92 of her paintings and drawings, along with photographs of the artist, selections from the Museum’s permanent modern and Art Deco collection, sculptures, books, and drawings from Lempicka’s teacher and mentor, André Lhote.

De Lima Greene notes that Art Deco style took the basic principles of Modernism and Industrial Design. The style was popularized in everything from jewelry, buildings, and furniture to graphics, radios, and even vacuum cleaners. And for Lempicka’s work, there was a strong bent toward her personal interests in other Art Deco-reflected areas—fashion and design.

“The term came about in 1925 with the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris, and it was a huge project,” de Lima Greene says. And Art Deco dominated design from the 1920s up to World War II.

Her work also reflected her interests in the Hollywood glamour of the day. “Absolutely she loved the theater and cinema. And when she worked with photographers to have her own portraits made, she was super aware on how to manipulate glamour to her best advantage,” de Lima Greene notes.

“She also understood how her work would look in reproduction. She photographed it carefully from the start of her career. She was very businesslike in that fashion. And it helped her work get reproduced more often in magazines. And she knew the power of the arresting gaze. She used it herself, and she encouraged her models to do so as well. She wanted a woman to be liberated and modern, but also mysterious.”

Lempicka was born in 1894 with the name Tamara Rozalia Gurwik-Górska (though later documents say her true name as Tamara Rosa Hurwitz) in Warsaw, Poland. She married a lawyer, studied art in Paris where she was active in the city’s social and art scenes, became a mistress to a Baron, later marrying him and becoming known as “The Baroness with a Brush.”

But following the outbreak of World War II, Lempicka, fearful of developments due to her Jewish ancestry, and her husband moved to the United States. A libertine, she also had many love affairs with both men and women.

Lempicka continued to work most of her life (including work with still lifes and abstract art), even though Art Deco fell out of fashion for years before being “rediscovered” in the late ‘60s. She moved to Mexico in 1974 and died six years later at the age of 85.

She described her own work thusly: “I was the first woman to make clear paintings, and that was the origin of my success. Among a hundred canvases, mine were always recognizable. The banality in which art had sunk gave me a feeling of disgust. I was searching for a craft that no longer existed; I worked quickly with a delicate brush. I was in search of technique, craft, simplicity and good taste. My goal: never copy. Create a new style, with luminous and brilliant colors, rediscover the elegance of my models.”

Lempicka also has a very local connection. She spent a lot of time to Houston to be closer to her daughter with her first husband, Kizette, beginning in the 1950 before moving here in 1963.

“She lived on Reba Drive in River Oaks,” de Lima Greene notes, before revealing her favorite anecdote. Apparently, Lempicka was looking after her grandchildren while her daughter and son-in-law were on vacation. Lempicka decided that the color of the Houston house was too bland, and would look much better in pink.

“So, she tried out different shades on it to the shock and horror of the neighborhood association!” de Lima Greene says. “But I so regret that there is no photo documentation of the pink striped house before it was painted again.”

After the death of second husband, Lempicka also lived for a time in the Warwick Hotel (the Hotel Zaza today), then the Regency House on Westheimer, while holding court at the River Oaks Tennis Club on Kirby.

Befitting her unique life, Lempicka requested that after her death, her ashes be scattered on the crater of Popocatepetl, a volcano in Mexico, which they were.

“She was dramatic to the end!” de Lima Greene says.

Finally, we ask our favorite Houston Press curator question: If de Lima Greene could take one work home with her when the exhibition is over, which one would it be and why?

“There are a number of paintings by Lempicka of one of her greatest loves, the poet Ira Perrot. Including a famous one where she’s in a white silk dress clutching lilies. It’s so famous, I would feel abashed to own it!”

Tamara de Lempicka runs from March 9 through May 26 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in the Caroline Wiess Law Building, 1001 Bissonnet. For more information, call 713-639-7300 or visit MFAH.org/exhibitions. $20-$24, children 12 and under free.