Tamara de Lempicka (b.1898 Warsaw - d.1980 Cuernavaca) | 1564

Tamara de Lempicka was a painter of Polish origin working in Art Déco style. She studied drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg and at the Academie Ranson in Paris. In the 1940s, she was a favourite portraitist of Hollywood stars and the social elite. She created portraits of modern women, driving cars, dressed in trousers, independent. She depicted her models in a sculptural, geometric manner, using intense colours. Her work 'Portrait de Marjorie Ferry' is so far the most expensive painting by a Polish artist ever auctioned (over 82 million zloty).