Born Maria Gorska, in Warsaw in 1898 or Moscow 1895(she preferred Warsaw 1902), of a wealthy middle class parents. After her parents divorced, she spent time with her rich grandmother who spoiled her with expensive clothes, travel and schooling in Switzerland. Later she moved to St Petersburg and lived with her millionairess aunt. She developed a taste for the high life that was to stay with her for life.
During the war she met and fell in love with a Russian count, Taduesz Lempicki, they married in 1916, then fled to Paris during the revolution. Now known as Tamara De Lempicka, she studied art and through out the 1920s established her self as a society portrait painter and became part of the exotic, sexy and glamorous Parisian social set that she epitomized in her paintings.
During the 1930s her glamorous life style continued with her second husband Baron Kuffner, a wealthy Hungarian. As the threat of war loomed they fled to America in 1939. In California Tamara became the toast of Hollywood as portrait painter of movie stars, in 1943 they moved to New York, where her success continued and the gossip columns dubbed her the “ Baroness with a brush”.
Her career halted in the 1950s, a combination of advancing age, ill health and the dominance of abstract expressionism made her work unfashionable. In 1978 she moved to Mexico and died there in 1980.
Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo Calderon was born in Coyoacan, Mexico City in 1907 ( she prefers 1910 ). Frida contracted polio as a child, which left her with a deformed right leg and foot. As a student of the National Preparatory School, she came across the work of Diego Rivera and considered the idea of becoming an artist.
In 1925 she was seriously injured in a collision between a tram and the bus she was travelling on, it left her with multiple injuries which led doctors to doubt whether she would survive. During her convalescence she began to paint. Although she made an initial recovery, the injuries left her unable to have children, for the rest of her life she under went a continuing series of operations on her spine, pelvis and legs and had to endure long periods of great suffering.
In 1928 she joined the communist party and came in to contact with Rivera, they fell in love and married the following year. Frida’s work developed into paintings of intense self expression, often relating to her physical and mental health. She was greatly influenced by many aspects including her political beliefs, pre Columbian art, naïve folk art of Mexico and Surrealism. Her tempestuous relationship with Rivera is also an influence in her painting.
Although she died young (she was only 47) due to ongoing ill health, her paintings of the 1930s and 40s shows us that she is truly of the greatest artists of the 20th century, her work has the power to move people on all levels. In 1958 the Mexican government opened the Frida Kahlo Museum and gave her the status of national treasure.
These two female painters are contemporary, both worked in the 1930s and 40s, yet their work is in starck contrast to each other. Tamara's work shows the lifestyle of glamour, she led the high life of sex, drugs and cocktail parties and the lives of the rich and famous are reflected in her paintings. Frida on the other hand comes from the opposite end of the spectrum, an ardent communist and a political activist. Her work shows her own personal suffering and is full of self expression. When looked at in comparison these two painters show us two very different attitudes to society. Tamara is often looked down on in the art world, she is seen as frivilous and shallow, a creator of pretty pictures and not much more. Whilst Frida is considered a very important artist, a feminist icon, who's self expression is a long and lasting influence in the world of painting.
