Warsaw, Poland

Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980, aka Maria Gorska) was a Polish painter known for the “soft cubism” by which she epitomized the sensual side of the Art Deco movement (her renderings of stylishly sexy, bedroom-eyed women remain unmatched to this day). Tamara attended boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland before moving to St. Petersburg, Russia (where she experienced the Bolshevik Revolution)— then on to her own bohemian twenties in Paris during the Roaring 20s, where she quickly became the most fashionable portrait painter of her generation (especially among the haute bourgeoisie and aristocracy who both criticized and admired her “perverse Ingrism.”)

Images above: Lempicka’s iconic Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti and Saint Moritz from 1929, Young Lady with Gloves from 1930, and The Refugees from 1931 (drawn from an impressive online collection of 149 works, here).