"Tamara de Lempicka: Art Deco Icon" is the companion book for the 2004-05 exhibitions of her work at the Royal Academy in London and the Kunstforum Wien in Vienna.

You'll usually find de Lempicka's work scattered about in various Art Deco collection books or exhibits, but a career retrospective on her impressive work and long, colorful, peripatetic life is truly a rare thing.

De Lempicka's slick style of portraiture embodied the glamor, style, modernity and sexuality of the Art Deco period that was fashionable during the inter-war years. Like Art Deco itself, her work fell out of favor during the 1940s and 50s, only to be resurrected in subsequent decades as the public's interest in the art of the inter-war period reemerged.

Compiling such an anthology is clearly a labor of love for the authors. Alain Blondel, Ingried Brugger and Tag Gronberg do an excellent job presenting and analyzing de Lempicka's portfolio, as well as illustrating her stature in the world of 20th Century art. De Lempicka's influences (Picasso, Lhote), her art, her loves, her vanity and her travels from czarist Warsaw to bohemian Paris to glamorous Hollywood are all discussed in these pages as well.

This book is a must-buy for de Lempicka enthusiasts and I also recommend it to anyone interested in Art Deco in general. It also makes a terrific gift for anyone interested in painting, particularly portrait painting.

I adore Tamara's work and have for years. I've read about her, but it was frustrating because the books all seemed to show the same handful of paintings over and over. I thought I was crazy spending this much money on a book (never spent this much before and will probably never spend this much again). But I've owned it now for a couple of years and I never regretted buying it! This book shows me the complete works of Tamara. I've looked at the pictures over and over. If you really like Tamara's work - ie: she is your all time favorite artist - then buy this book. Buy it at full price or buy it second hand (make sure all the pages are there). You'll see how she painted when she started out and how her work evolved until her death. I have been able to experience that process as a viewer with this book and that was what was important to me.