Tamara de Lempicka (Łempicka) (May 16, 1898–March 18, 1980), born Maria Górska in Warsaw, in partitioned Poland, was a Polish Art Deco painter and She was soon the most fashionable portrait painter of her generation among the haute bourgeoisie and aristocracy, painting duchesses and grand dukes and socialites. Her distinctive and bold artistic style developed quickly (influenced by what Lhote sometimes referred to as “soft cubism” and by Denis’ “synthetic cubism”) and epitomized the cool yet sensual side of the Art Deco movement. For her, Picasso “embodied the novelty of destruction”. She thought that many of the Impressionists drew badly and employed “dirty” colors. De Lempicka’s technique would be novel, clean, precise, and elegant. During the Roaring 20s Paris, Tamara de Lempicka was part of the bohemian life: she knew Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and André Gide. Famous for her libido, she was bisexual, and her affairs with both men and women were carried out in ways that were scandalous at the time. She travelled to the United States for the first time in 1929, to paint a commissioned portrait for Rufus Bush and to arrange a show of her work at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. The show went well but the money she earned was lost when the bank she used collapsed following the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Some of her paintings of this time had a Salvador Dalí quality, as displayed in Key and Hand, 1941. In 1943, the couple relocated to New York City……….