Monday, May 3, 2021

When Fascist Macho Failed To Sell

Tamara de Lempicka's most famous painting is her 1929 Autoportrait (Tamara in the Green Bugatti) which defined a certain freewheeling independence for women at the end of the Jazz Age

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c7/Tamara_de_Lempicka%2C_Autoportrait_%28Tamara_in_a_Green_Bugatti%29.jpeg

In 2016 another of her paintings came to auction. The bidding failed to reach the reserve but the pic, just as Autopilot did a few years later, defined the era, in this case of the Italian upper class in the early days of Italian fascism. The brutalist macho Art Deco style was a certain place, at a certain time.

https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2016/10/Lempicka-Portrait-Guido-Sommi-527x1024.jpg

Portrait de Guido Sommi, 1925

I was surprised when the painting didn't sell and personally put the story from ArtNet in the linkvault, which, for some reason popped out this morning. If interested here's ArtNet's report on the auction results.

And here is https://www.delempicka.org/artwork/portrait-of-guido-sommi