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“Gypsy Fortune Teller”

By Tamara de Lempicka

Provenance: 1993 Barry Friedman Ltd., NY, NY, USA

                                               1925 Purchased directly from Mme Cheyrou

Literature:       “LEMPICKA Catalogue Raisonne 1921-1979”, Alain Blondel, 1999  Fig. B.6, page 84

                        “Tamara de Lempicka – Paris 1920 – 1938”, Gioia Mori, 1994, example 1°, rep. pg. 100, ref. p. 223

“Tamara de Lempicka – A Life of Deco and Decadence”, Laura Claridge, 1999, ref. pgs. 71, 72, 81, 82 and Notes p.386, no. 57.

"Tamara de Lempicka", Palazzo Reale, Milan, Italy, Skira, 2004, p. 98, n° 2

"Tamara de Lempicka", Alain Blondel, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Arts, Mexico City, Mexico,  2009, TF Editores, p. 66-673, n° 2

"Tamara de Lempicka et Son Epoque", Bunkamura Museum of Art, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, NTNC, 2010, p. 037, n° 2,   

Exhibitions:    1996 Exposition Personnelle. New York, USA.  Barry Friedman, Ltd. <<Tamara de Lempicka>> (08°, Gypsy Fortune Teller)

2004-2005   Exposition Personnelle, Vienna, Austria, Kunstforum BA-CA. <<Tamara de Lempicka>> (n° 01, Gypsy Fortuneteller)

2006  Exposition Personnelle.  Milan, Italy, Palazzo Reale. <<Tamara de Lempicka>>

2007 Exposition Personnelle.  Vigo, Spain, Casa das Artes. <<Tamara de Lempicka>>

2009 Exposition Personnelle.  Mexico City, Mexico, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes <<Tamara de Lempicka>>

2010 Exposition Personnelle.  Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan Bunkamura Museum of Art <<Tamara de Lempicka et Son Epoque>>

2010 Exposition Personnelle.  Chuo-ku, Kobe, Japan, Hyogo Prefectual Museum,  <<Tamara de Lempicka et Son Epoque>>

A  new book "Tamara de Lempicka - A Life of Deco and Decadence" just published in October 1999, by an incredibly talented author, Laura Claridge, sheds even more light on the life of the most fascinating Tamara.  Reinventing herself and her life whenever she deemed it appropriate or necessary, she catapulted herself to fame, ,fortune and infamy.  With the urging of her sister, she began to paint, as a way to support her family when her unemployed husband could not.  Exerpts from Laura's book follow:

p.71 Adrienne reminded her fashionably voluptuous sister of her talent for painting, and suggested that Tamara study art at the Academie de la Grande Chaumier, where no tuition was charged. She could then support her family by selling her paintings.

p. 72 For the rest of her life Tamara maintained that her vocation as a painter was born at this moment from the need to achieve financial independence through a family-sanctioned talent. Adrienne’s confidence in her sister was crucial, since throughout her life Tamara respected Ada more than any other woman.

Further quotes from the book and it's footnotes discuss the importance of one of the first, and possibly, her first painting, known as "The Card Player" or " The Gypsy Fortune Teller".

Less than a year elapsed between this interchange in the late 1919 and Tamara’s completion of two highly successful, sophisticated portraits executed in 1920, The Card Player and The Girl in Blue, an achievement suggesting a talent that was already well developed.

Only three years later after her crucial conversation with Adrienne, Tamara’s work would be included in the juried Salon d’Automne show.

p. 82 Without a doubt the frenzied rhythms of her life suited her art. She developed quickly, producing within two years of arriving in Paris, several oil paintings that retain their power and presence today. The Card Player, from 1920, shows the unmistakable influence of the proceeding generation’s strongest woman painter, Suzanne Valadon, whose clear effect on Tamara’s early work has gone remarkably unnoticed. The Card Player, tames the grotesque into something recognizable and real, whose domestication nonetheless threatens to exceed the boundaries of decorum. Maurice Deni’s Fauvist learnings reverberate in this painting’s bright colors, more garrish than the jewel-like shades of the mature Lempicka. The composition itself anticipates Valadon’s ferocious Self-Portrait of 1923 so impressively that it seems Valadon must have seen the earlier painting. In Tamara’s work, the woman’s breasts sag within her red bandeau, suggesting the weight of age, but the amount of pictoral space given to contrasting bright colored skirt suggests that this is a woman to be reckoned with. The face, with it’s ominous frown, and narrowed eyes, threatens the person she glares at sideways. With broad, obvious brushstrokes Tamara strengthens the agressive tone of the painting.

If Tamara was inspired by Valadon’s almost violent aestetic, her painting also contains something of Van Gogh’s bold stroke and of Gaugin’s strong color, suggesting that Denis’ high praise of both men found expression in his reluctant student’s art.

p.386 Notes "Chapter 3, The Practical Emigre" no. 57

In fact, however, if the dating of Tamara’s "The Card Player" is correct, it may well have influenced "The Blue Room", done by Valadon three years later in 1923. Valadon’s reclining heavyset woman, smoking as she seems to meditate on something from the two books closed beside her, reproduces the same treatment of bandeau and breast, with the top piece of the apparel seeming to sustain the weight of the most obvious sign of the aggressive-looking woman’s sex.

The portrait of the gypsy, with a hard and set face, illustrates one of the first attempts of Lempicka, again within the lines of the theories of Andre L’Hote. Again, never displaying the exaggerated deformation of the bodies, which characterizes her paintings between 1921 and 1922. Instead, she seems to use more interest with colors, close to one another for the effect of violent dissonances: the yellow gold of the skirt, next to the red of the blouse and the green of the embroidered bolero. A certain imperfection of execution is noticeable in the left hand, which holds the tarot cards. The background is characteristic with large brush strokes and with the use of a basic color.

All images © 2004 Art Du Monde Foundation. Unauthorized reproduction and use without permission is strictly prohibited.

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Last modified: August 15, 2009