March 9 – May 26, 2025
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Caroline Wiess Law Building
1001 Bissonnet Street, Houston, TX 77005
Events related to the exhibition

With over 90 works on display, Tamara de Lempicka exhibition present a new perspective on the artist, her life, her work. Exuding cool elegance and sensuality, Tamara de Lempicka helped to define Art Deco.

Tamara de Lempicka exhibition is the first scholarly museum retrospective of the artist’s work in the United States, exploring Łempicka’s artistic influences and revealing the process behind her works that have become synonymous with Art Deco. The exhibition first premiered at the de Young, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, on October 12 last year and ran through February 9. Following its presentation at the de Young, the exhibition is now on view in Houston and will be on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from March 9 through May 26, 2025.

Capturing the glamour and vitality of 1920s postwar Paris and the cosmopolitan sheen of Hollywood celebrity, Tamara de Lempicka (1894-1980) infused her paintings with a brilliant sense of fashion, design, and the theatrical. The first American museum retrospective of her work, Tamara de Lempicka explores the artist’s distinctive style and unconventional life as she rose to the pinnacle of café society. The exhibition charts Lempicka’s complicated trajectory against the backdrop of the era. While she reveled in her avant-garde sensibilities and openly conducted affairs with both men and women, she simultaneously concealed her Jewish ancestry as she evaded persecution in her native Poland, escaped Russia following the Soviet revolution, and ultimately fled Europe in 1939.

Featuring more than 90 works of art, the exhibition traverses Lempicka’s career from her beginnings in Paris to the decade she spent in New York and Los Angeles in the 1940s. Highlighting the evolution of her artistic style in concert with these transitions, her classic portraits, sensual figure studies, and melancholic still lifes trace the influences she absorbed from Cubist aesthetics, fashion and design, and her deep appreciation for art of the Renaissance and the paintings of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. This exhibition also offers the first in-depth study of Lempicka’s drawings and compositional studies, revealing the creative process behind her iconic paintings. In addition, the display is augmented by exceptional examples from the MFAH’s Art Deco collection of costumes and design, as well as signature photographs from the era.

Lempicka largely withdrew from the art world in the 1950s and ultimately made Houston her second home. Following several decades of obscurity, she enjoyed a revival of interest in her work, sparked by the 1972 landmark exhibition Tamara de Lempicka de 1925 à 1939, mounted by the Galerie du Luxembourg in Paris. In the years since, her paintings have been avidly collected by celebrities like Elton John, Madonna, and Barbra Streisand, all of whom were attracted to the artist’s carefully groomed image. Streisand has contributed an appreciation of Lempicka’s work to the Tamara de Lempicka exhibition catalogue.

“Life is like a journey. Pack only the bare necessities, because you have to leave room for what you collect along the way”. – Tamara de Lempicka

Tamara de Lempicka (Tamara Łempicka) was a Polish painter and a prominent figure in the world of Art Deco. Her legacy is alive and well, fusing art history and philosophy, and boldly entering into fashion, photography, literature, and music videos, and her distinctive style involves interpreting the world around her through her unique language of painting. Through her portraits, she captured contemporary figures and everyday heroes, particularly those belonging to the social and cultural elite. Her work reflects the spirit of the 1920s, portraying a sense of liberation and empowerment. Łempicka’s models were seen as modern women, free from the constraints of traditional morality, exuding a sense of confidence and strength. Her art and personal life were influenced by the decadence of the times, embodying the spirit of the era in which she lived. Her lifestyle was far removed from the commonly accepted social norms. If you want to find out more about Tamara de Lempicka, read the Culture.pl examination of the painter’s life.

About the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), located in the heart of Houston’s Museum District, is one of the largest and most distinguished art institutions in the world. Following the completion of an ambitious eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the 2020 opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building, MFAH now ranks as the 12th largest art museum globally in terms of gallery space.

Home to a permanent collection spanning over 5,000 years of history, the museum boasts nearly 80,000 works from six continents. In 2023, MFAH welcomed over 900,000 visitors, securing its position as one of the 20 most-visited museums in the United States.

“Tamara de Lempicka” is organized by de Young, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Lead image: Tamara de Lempicka, Young Girl in Green (Young Girl with Gloves). c. 1931. Oil on board. Centre Pompidou. Purchase, 1932. Inv. JP557P. © 2025 Tamara de Lempicka Estate, LLC / ADAGP, Paris / ARS, NY. Digital image © CNAC/MNAM, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

Images of the exhibition: courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.