Tamara de Lempicka: The Art of Modern Glamour and Villa la Fleur. Art Collection in Konstancin Jeziorna, Poland.

Few artists embody the shimmering elegance and contradictions of the 20th century like Tamara de Lempicka (1894–1980).

This is a short YouTube video by deAbstract about the beautiful Villa de La Fleur and Tamaras' collection in magical Konstancin Jeziorna, curated by Polish businessman and art collector, Marek Roefler.

Known as the “baroness with a brush,” she painted a world of sleek surfaces, sculptural bodies, and cosmopolitan confidence. Her canvases are instantly recognizable: women rendered like chrome goddesses, lovers draped across green Bugattis, portraits infused with both power and eroticism. Today her work is not only celebrated in major retrospectives—such as the 2024–25 de Young Museum and Fine Arts Museum exhibition in San Francisco but also encountered more intimately at Villa la Fleur, a museum outside Warsaw devoted to the École de Paris.

 

Villa de La Fleur, Konstancin Jeziorna, Poland

Tamara’s life was a continuous act of reinvention. Born in Warsaw to a wealthy family, she grew up surrounded by privilege and culture, spending parts of her youth in St. Petersburg and Switzerland. In 1916, she married the Polish lawyer Tadeusz Lempicki, but their lives were upended by the Russian Revolution.

Fleeing turmoil, they arrived in Paris, where Tamara transformed herself into an artist. At first, she trained with Maurice Denis and André Lhote, absorbing elements of Cubism and modern classicism, and soon developed a style that combined the crisp lines of Art Déco with the sensual polish of Italian Mannerism.

 

Paris in the 1920s was the perfect stage for her ambition. While other artists painted bohemian cafés or abstract experiments, Lempicka carved her place as the portraitist of a new elite. She painted aristocrats, bankers, singers, and writers, giving them a look that was both glamorous and strangely industrial. Her brush created bodies like sculptures, skin like porcelain, and clothing like satin molded to chrome. The women in her paintings, whether society hostesses or languid nudes, radiated strength and sensuality.

Among her most celebrated works are Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti (1929), the ultimate image of female independence and speed; Young Girl in Green (1927), with its sharp contrasts of satin and shadow; Portrait of Ira P. (1930), one of her boldest depictions of queer intimacy; and The Sleeping Girl (1932), which captures erotic languor in sculptural folds of flesh and fabric. Her monumental Mother Superior (1933) and the iconic Portrait of Madame M. (1932) further demonstrate her ability to merge religiosity, eroticism, and modern style into one striking vision.

 

Adam and Eve (1932)

Her personal life echoed this pursuit of freedom. Her marriage to Tadeusz Lempicki ended in divorce as she embraced her independence and her growing celebrity. In 1934, she married again, this time to Baron Raoul Kuffner, a wealthy Austrian sugar magnate who had first commissioned his portrait from her. Their union gave Tamara the title that stuck in the press—the “Baroness with a Brush”—and secured her place in high society.

Yet beneath the glitter, her art often carried coded references to her own desires and relationships. Many of her nudes and portraits of women suggested an openness to queer identity, something that later generations would see as central to her modernity.

 

Lempicka’s career flourished across continents. After Paris, she moved with Kuffner to the United States in 1939, just before the outbreak of war, living first in Hollywood and later in New York. She continued to paint portraits for wealthy clients, though her stylized elegance sometimes seemed at odds with the shifting tastes of postwar America.

In her later years, she withdrew to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she painted less frequently but remained a legendary presence, remembered for her flamboyant self-fashioning as much as for her canvases.

By the late 20th century, her work was rediscovered by new audiences, with collectors such as Madonna bringing her into pop culture and fueling a revival of interest.

 

This resurgence has culminated recently in the most comprehensive retrospective ever organized in the United States. The de Young Museum in San Francisco opened Tamara de Lempicka in October 2024, presenting more than 120 works, including masterpieces like Kizette in Pink (1926), a tender portrait of her daughter; La Musicienne (1929), with its sharp geometry and flowing drapery; and Portrait of Marquis d’Afflitto (1925), which epitomizes her aristocratic commissions. The exhibition repositioned her as not only an Art Déco icon but also a bold modernist whose paintings explored gender, desire, and the politics of image-making. The show then traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in 2025, drawing record crowds and confirming her place in the global canon.

 

For those who want to see her work in a different, more intimate context, there is Villa la Fleur in Konstancin-Jeziorna, just outside Warsaw. The museum, created by collector Marek Roefler, is housed in two beautifully restored villas connected by a sculpture garden. Roefler’s passion is the École de Paris—the community of émigré artists who made Paris a creative capital between the wars.

His collection includes painters such as Mela Muter, Mojżesz Kisling, Eugeniusz Zak, Henryk Hayden, and Alicja Halicka, alongside sculptors like Józef Csaky, Xawery Dunikowski, and Bolesław Biegas.

Tamara de Lempicka holds a prominent place within these galleries, and the museum has dedicated special exhibitions to her, including the 2022 show Tamara Łempicka a art déco, which placed her works in dialogue with the decorative arts and design objects of the Jazz Age.

 

The setting itself enhances the experience. The villas, originally built in the early 20th century and carefully remodeled in 2009 and 2021, preserve their historic character while opening into sleek galleries that suit the polished modernity of Lempicka’s art.

Walking through these spaces, with Art Déco furniture, paintings, and sculpture arranged in conversation, one feels immersed in the world that shaped Lempicka’s vision—an ecosystem of design where art, fashion, and architecture intertwined.

 

Villa de La Fleur, Konstancin Jeziorna, Poland

What makes Lempicka so enduring is that her paintings still feel strikingly contemporary. They anticipated conversations about female agency, queer identity, and the power of style long before these became mainstream cultural debates.

Her portraits are more than images of individuals; they are performances of modernity, self-fashioning through design and art. At Villa la Fleur, her works resonate within a Polish context, alongside fellow émigrés of the École de Paris, while at the de Young, they command a global stage.

And this is a video story curated by her granddaughter, Marrisa de Lempicka

Together, they remind us that Tamara de Lempicka’s art was never just about beauty. It was about looking at life and Art from a different lens and the reinvention of life itself.