Art Deco queen Tamara Łempicka exhibition coming to REÖK Regional Arts Center in Szeged
A new exhibition on the life and work of world-renowned 20th-century painter Tamara Łempicka will open Sept. 5 at the Reök Palace, the Regional Arts Center known as REÖK – the institution informed Szegedify.
The exhibition, titled The Queen of Art Deco, Tamara Łempicka, is organized by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Tamara Łempicka Estate, in cooperation with the Polish Institute in Budapest and REÖK. It presents the Polish-born artist’s work and biography through 20 large-format panels.
Łempicka, born into a Polish aristocratic family, received a European education and fled west with her family after the fall of Tsarist Russia. She settled in Paris as a young woman, where she pursued a flourishing artistic career beginning in the 1920s. She became known as the first female star painter of her era, remembered both for her artistic talent and for her glamorous, often controversial private life spent in the company of Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Coco Chanel and Marlene Dietrich.
Her art is recognized for combining elements of Art Deco and Cubism. She is best known for her bold portraits of the social elite and for sensual nudes that attracted attention during her lifetime. In the late 1930s, her work began to feature refugees, ordinary people and Christian saints. After fleeing the upheavals of World War II, she expanded her subjects to include still lifes and later abstract works, eventually developing a new style using a palette knife instead of a brush. From the 1960s, she frequently recreated her earlier works.
The exhibition opening will take place at 5 p.m. Sept. 5. Speakers will include Dr. Karol Biernacki, honorary consul of Poland in Szeged; Jarosław Bajaczyk, director of the Polish Institute; and László Barnák, general director of the Szeged National Theater and REÖK. The exhibition will be opened by Dr. Róbert Nátyi, chief curator of REÖK.
The event will also feature a book presentation. Polish author Grzegorz Musiał chronicled Łempicka’s life in the novel I, Tamara, published in Hungarian by Prae Publishing in a translation by Zsuzsa Mihályi. Set in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where Łempicka spent the last decade of her life, the novel will be introduced by Nátyi in the Reök Salon.
Note that the exhibition opening will be in Hungarian.
A documentary film will also be shown in connection with the exhibition. The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & The Art of Survival, by Amy Harrison and Julio Rubio, premiered in May at the Urania National Film Theatre in Budapest. Screening in Szeged is scheduled for Sept. 14 and Sept. 26 at the Belvárosi Cinema.
The exhibition will remain on view at Reök Palace until Sept. 28, according to the press release.