Directed by Julie Rubio (USA, 2024, 96 min.). Massachusetts premiere.

With her distinctive high-gloss sensual nudes and cooly elegant portraits of high society in the Jazz Age, Polish Jewish artist Tamara de Lempicka (1894–1980) helped define Art Deco style and the glamour and transgressive vitality of post WW1 Paris. After stunning the art world in the 1920s with her showstopping work, which mixed cubist and neoclassicist styles, Lempicka fled to the United States in 1940 amidst the rise of fascism in Europe.

Director Julie Rubio has created a riveting account of a woman who defied the rules—as an artist, mother, and bisexual woman—and gained notoriety for her romantic liaisons with friends and models. Beloved by art collectors the world over, including Barbra Streisand, Jack Nicholson, and Madonna, Lempicka is the subject of a 2024 Broadway musical, and a rising star in the current art market, where her work recently sold for more than $21 million, the second-highest amount ever paid for art by a female painter.

Narrated by Anjelica Huston, this new documentary examines Lempicka’s extraordinary life and the aesthetic power and political impact of her marvelous paintings.

Join us for a post-film discussion with Claire Howard, Curator of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Watch the trailer.