Tamara Lempicka (1894 Warsaw - 1980 Cuernavaca), Standing nude, ca. 1928.

pencil, paper, 43 × 27 cm in light passe-partout
in p. d.: "T. DE LEMPICKA" (artist's stamp)

Provenance:
- Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco, California
- Private collection, Poland

Exhibited:
- "Tamara Lempicka - Woman on the Move," National Museum in Lublin, March 18-August 14, 2022.
- "Tamara Lempicka a art déco. Tradition and Modernity," Villa la Fleur, September 2, 2022 - January 31, 2023.

Reproduced:
- "Tamara Lempicka a Art Déco. Tradition and Modernity," National Museum Lublin, Villa le Fleur Konstancin Jeziorna, 2022 -2023, exhibition cat. p. 133, cat. no. 40

"The most common subject of the drawings are female nudes. The woman, her pose, the perversity of her nakedness, the coquettishness of her gesture, the power contained in the construction of her body - these are basic expressions from Lempicka's dictionary of art. All these tricks have been repeatedly rehearsed in sketches. The way drawing is used clearly indicates its servitude to painting. Tamara Lempicka exercises and tests on these - beautiful and alertly undressed - bodies the meanings that result from expression, tension, emphasis or exaggeration of muscles, the dance-like arrangement of poses (...). Lempicka exercised her ear for meaning by making many drawings on the same subject. She repeated poses, listened to their whispers, practiced the sense of the body's roundness and the exposure of shape provided by shadow. The drawing knowledge manifested itself in full talent in the paintings. Each figure was given maximum voice on its own behalf. That's why Tamara's women are so fascinating, they are manifestations of a completed, rich and unprecedented femininity." "Lempicka. Drawings," introduction by M. A. Potocka, Olszanica 2022, p. 4.

"Exposing corporeality and sensuaIity the artist used deformation, unification, depersonalization. She brought the depiction of the individual figure, like Léger, closer to the principles of repetitive machine production. The depicted nudes appeared on the border between individual subjectivity and objectification, expressing the delight and at the same time the impotence of the mannequin absorbed in the modern mechanisms of sales and consumption. Her paintings described female corporeality and subjectivity within the capitalist rules of allure and desire, depicting the glitz and anxiety of the early days of mass culture. It was the nudes of nameless models that were in the greatest demand among the artist's works, both between the wars and today, becoming a testimony to the game with the patterns of popular culture" Marcin Lachowski, Tamara Lempicka in the circle of artistic inspiration, [in]: "Tamara Lempicka a Art Deco. Tradition and Modernity," National Museum Lublin, Villa le Fleur Konstancin Jeziorna, 2022-2023, exhibition cat. p.46