MILAN, ITALY.- The Assessorato alla Cultura, [commission for cultural affairs] of the City of Milan, in cooperation with Palazzo Reale and Arthemisia is sponsoring the great retrospective exhibition of the works of Tamara de Lempicka (Warsaw 1898 – Cuernavaca 1980) in Palazzo Reale, Milan, through January 14, 2007. The exhibition, curated by Gioia Mori, is a tribute to the Polish artist who, after having reconquered London, Vienna and Paris, with shows dedicated to her between 2004 and 2006, is now back in Milan.

The exhibition is particularly meaningful because it was precisely in Milan, at the Bottega di Poesia gallery at Via Montenapoleone 14, owned and managed by Count Emanuele Castelbarco that Tamara de Lempicka held her first personal exhibition in 1925. Today, eighty years later, Milan proudly presents the infinite spell of Tamara’s works and ideas to new generations.

A cosmopolitan painter and icon of Art Déco, Tamara de Lempicka created images that have become the symbols of an era, the “roaring Twenties” and Thirties. She became the most brilliant and sparkling interpreter of the period filling her paintings with symbols of modernity and portraying the free, independent and bold “new woman.” With her conception of life as a work of art, and with her strong determination, Tamara nurtured her artistic talent and also carefully constructed her own image of an elegant, sophisticated woman and quickly became the extravagant protagonist of European society..

Palazzo Reale will be showcasing 60 extraordinary paintings and 10 drawings by Tamara de Lempicka, including one never-before seen drawing, Portrait of Bianca Belinsioni (1925) from the Collection of Suzanne and Selman Selvi. Over half the paintings have either never been shown in Italy, or not since her personal exhibition at the Bottega di Poesia in 1925. This list includes The Chinese Man (1921 circa), The Bohémienne (1923 circa), Portrait of Kizette (1924 circa), Seated Nude in Profile (1923 circa), The Red Bird (1924), The Pink Tunic (April 1927), Portrait of Baron Kuffner (1928), Maternity (1928), Nude with Buildings (1930) and many others.

The exhibition entitled Tamara de Lempicka covers the career of this fascinating Polish artist who lived in Russia, Paris, and Italy, then move to the United States and finally spent the last years of her life in Mexico A carefully selected group of paintings and drawings, as well as documents, photographs, repertory image recreates the atmosphere of the times, the great historic events, as well as the artist trends of the period in an arrangement that allows visitors to immerge themselves in and feel a part of the artist’s world and her life, a life that was filled with glamour but also marked by the earthshaking events of the twentieth century.

The exhibit is organized into 12 sections which maintain a constant parallelism between Tamara’s life and works. A Polish girl from Saint Petersburg in Paris opens the exhibition highlighting the artist’s escape from Russian to Western Europe. Tamara, already married to Tadeusz Lempicki, left Saint Petersburg that had fallen to the Bolsheviks and began a new life in Paris. Studying with Lhote, Pontormo and Ingres is the section devoted to her artistic training. Mindful Cubist-inspired Russian art, a pupil of André Lhote in Paris, Tamara de Lempicka made her debut in the city’s art world in 1922. Among her early portraits, Palazzo Reale is featuring The Bohémienne (1923), and Russian Dancer (1923-1924) in which she has already mastered her personal style characterized by marked deformations and a tendency to exaggerate volumes, as in the portrait Woman in a Black Dress (1923).

Her first personal exhibition: Milan 1925, was held at Count Castelbarco’s gallery, Bottega di Poesia; it sanctioned her international launch and is reconstructed here with some significant works such as Portrait of prince Eristoff (1925), Portrait of marquis d’Affitto (1925), Portrait of the duchess de la Salle (1925), Two Little Girls with Ribbons (1925).

The section entitled From Castelbarco to D’Annunzio examines Emanuele Castelbarco, an important figure in the Milanese cultural world of the Twenties and his work as publisher and gallery owner and Gabriele D’Annunzio, the man whom Tamara rejected during a stormy sojourn at the Vittoriale. The display includes 12 letters written by Tamara de Lempicka to “Vate”, from the Archivio del Vittoriale di Gardone.

Parallel paths: the Italian “neo-classicists” is the section that illustrates the artistic-historical climate surrounding Tamara’s first Milan exhibition. They were important years for Italian art dominated by the “Novecento” protagonists some of whom shared common themes such as Felice Casorati, Ubaldo Oppi, Achille Funi and Francesco Trombadori.

The “perverse” Lempicka style, is the title of the sixth section. Tamara achieved official acclaim in 1928 when the critic Alexandre coined the definition, “ingrisme pervers”, which later became famous. But it was also the moment of the family “débacle”: her husband, Tadeusz, abandoned Tamara for another woman, and in 1928 she began an affair with the Baron Raoul Kuffner. The exhibition features some of her famous portraits and nudes from the years of her greatest success including The Pink Tunic (1927), The Dream (1927), and La belle Rafaela in Green (1927).

The “fashionable” artist is the section documenting Tamara’s passion for fashion. Two of her many works which bear witness to this are displayed here The Two Girlfriends and Portrait of a Young Lady with a Cloche in which the subject is wearing a hat that Tamara herself had designed. Jacques-Henri Lartigue was a first hand witness of Tamara’s luxurious, extravagant world. Lartigue’s legacy includes some of the eloquent photographs of Paris during those years – the euphoric Paris after World War I, the city of masked balls, of Josephine Baker’s Révue Negre, of automobile races, of sexual escapades, of outings on sailboats: all this made fashion and was the fashion

Tamara the “charmante,” star of Paris reveals the Tamara who dominated the media: photographs, interviews, newspapers and magazines, a film and reports about her in the society columns. However, the success did not last, and as early as 1932-1933 some reviews began to describe the cone-like breasts, triangular shoulders and hair like metal filings as “slightly unpleasant. The works in this section include, Nude with Buildings (1930); Young Lady in Green (1930); the portrait of Ira Perrot (1930); Arlette Boucard with Arums (1931) and the portraits of two of Lempicka’s other lovers, the singer Suzy Solidor (1932), and the Venetian count Vettor Marcello (1933).

The studio on rue Méchain: grey modernity is the title of the section documenting Tamara’s studio in Paris. The was building designed by the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, outstanding representative of modernist architecture, and the studio itself was decorated by Tamara’s sister Adrienne Gurwick-Gorska, an architect who designed the furniture and accessories typical of the period’s tastes. Gravot’s photos, journalist’s descriptions and society column reports of Lempicka’s parties along with the surviving furnishings recreate the atmosphere of the place. It was here that Tamara mounted her solo exhibition in 1932 and held her famous receptions serving champagne and caviar and the soirées where the guests watched Nyota Inyoka perform Indian dances.

“Artist’s depression” is the tenth section. Embittered by the fact that Tadeusz remarried in 1932 Tamara began painting new subjects: saints, Madonnas and humanity’s victims and losers rather than the winners. Her illness was also affected b