Tamara de Lempicka was born Marie Gorska in Poland in 1898. She married young and moved to St. Petersburg. Her husband was arrested by the Bolsheviks and she won his freedom with her charm. They fled to Paris where she studied very hard to become an artist. She was renowned as a portrait painter of the rich and famous. Bisexual, she slept with many of her subjects.

It would be difficult to get past the sensational events in the life of Tamara de Lempicka to her work except that the work is every bit as sensational. These Art Deco paintings have the immediate appeal of posters--realistic but mannered images with intense colors, smooth surfaces, and voluptuous figures. The word critics have most often applied to her as an artist is "strange."

Her technique seems to have sprung into full flower without any period of development, became instantly fixed in all its peculiarities and never changed. (She did try to alter her technique in later years with disappointing results and quit exhibiting.) Only a few early paintings lack the svelte characteristics that make her work instantly recognizable. Surprisingly this technique served her well enough even when she chose subjects other than portraits of the rich and famous for which she was noted and in demand in her heyday.

Lempicka stands apart from other modern artists, a forceful personality of sizable proportions, and the icon of Art Deco. She outlived her fame and glory and her later years were not happy or productive. She died in Mexico in 1980 at the age of 82 and at her request her ashes were scattered on Mount Popacatepetl, a fitting and dramatic end to an unusual life.

This lovely book, published on the occasion of an exhibit of her work, is divided in three sections:The Artist, The Woman, and The Legend. In addition to the excellent reproductions of her paintings and nine essays by seven critics and her granddaughter, there are stunning photographs of Lempicka herself and some of her apartment in Paris.