Tamara de Lempika

The siren call of Tamara de Lempicka’s portrait of a cabaret singer

One of Lempicka’s best-known works is a self-portrait in leather helmet and gloves, the artist speeding along at the wheel of a Bugatti racing car, commissioned for the cover of the German fashion magazine Die Dame in 1929 (Portrait de Marjorie Ferry belonged to the fashion designer Wolfgang Joop between 1995 and 2009). Lempicka was a child of privilege who fled post-Revolutionary Russia for Paris, and who by dint of her own determination and talent financed an independent lifestyle that was as extravagantly stylish as it was notorious. She painted women who were liberated and confident in their sexuality. Alongside her two marriages she had numerous affairs with both women and men. It may have been one of her lovers, the nightclub singer and actress Suzy Solidor, who introduced Lempicka to the newly affianced Ferry (note the conspicuous whopper of an engagement ring on her finger).

https://www.apollo-magazine.com/tamara-de-lempicka-portrait-marjorie-ferry/