* Many art forms dominated by women have been historically 

dismissed as craft as opposed to fine Art. Women artists have 

faced challenges due to gender biases, and have often 

encountered difficulties in training, trading their work and 

gaining recognition.

In the 60s and 70s feminist artists and art historians created 

the “feminist art movement” that overtly addressed the role of 

women in the art world.(Christine Morison)

I was attracted to Lempicka's work 'Eden' by the sculptural feel to the painting and the very striking composition. My aim was not to copy the original, but to use a different medium (charcoal/ chalk) to add a dynamic element. Many of Lempicka's paintings are, like Eden, highly sensual and suggest she was not bound by the conventions of the time. (Elise Gibbons)

Tamara de Lempicka, born in Warsaw 1898, died 1980, born into a wealthy and prominent family. 

Her first paintings captured the Art Deco atmosphere with paintings of the upper classes and also nude drawings living up to the erotic desires of the 1920s.

She thought that many of the impressionists drew badly and employed "dirty" colors. De Lempicka's technique would be novel, clean, precise, and elegant.

In 1960 she changed her style to abstract art and began creating works with a spatula. In 1925, she painted her iconic work Auto-Portrait (Tamara in the Green Bugatti) for the cover of the German fashion magazine Die Dame, as summed up by the magazine Auto-Journal in 1974, the self-portrait of Tamara de Lempicka is a real image of the independent woman who asserts herself. Her hands are gloved, she is helmeted, and inaccessible; a cold and disturbing beauty through which pierces a formidable being….this woman is free! De Lempicka won her first major award in 1927, first prize at the Exposition Internationale de Beaux Arts in Bordeaux, France for her portrait of her daughter “ Kizette on the Balcony.” Obsessed with her work and her social life, de Lempicka neglected  her husband and rarely saw her daughter, when Kizette was not away at boarding school in France or England the girl was often with her grandmother Malvina. Kizette was neglected, but also immortalized. De Lempicka painted her only child repeatedly, leaving a striking portrait series - Kizette in Pink, 1926; Kizette on the Balcony, 1927; Kizette Sleeping, 1934; Portrait of Baroness Kizette, 1954–5, etc. In other paintings the women depicted tend to resemble Kizette.

In 1980, while living in Mexico , Tamara died in her sleep. Her daughter Kizette scattered her ashes over the crater of Mt. Popocatépt. (Christine Morison)

 

 

10 women, 10 lifes, and Tamara de Lempicka, ghost and inspiration.

I tried to paint but I can't. Something is not natural when I do it; If you gave me knitting needles I would feel the same. Anyway, when I think about creation I think about the idea: writing, painting or photography are exactly the same for me, everything is like breathing, inhalate life, and exhalate it.

So, it's decided, I will play with words while people around me play with colours. It's assumed that I should paint Adam's legs, could it be with sentences? It would be about desire and sin, the curve of the knees as forbidden place, the most dangerous because it looks innocent; line between them like these cracks to other reality, the desired one that stays hidden in the shadows.

Tamara de Lempicka talked about sex at the beginning of the last century. While people was thinking in wars, she was painting the luxury that was not going to last forever. People she paints are out of this world. They don't look to the viewer because they don't care at all, their gaze pierces us because we are not at the same level. But there is sadness on them, a kind of melancholy, maybe because they intuit the end. The end of an era that they ignored; they didn't belong to the same world. (Ana González Chouciño)

  

The Art Escape Project

The Art Escape project organised by Dagmar Schilling began in September 2013 and has attracted many talented Artists, coming together to exchange their ideas, skills, techniques and knowledge. The group of aspiring Artists meet weekly in The Forrest Centre which is located in the centre of Edinburgh overlooking the Castle which dominates the city. The Artists studio provides a peaceful haven in the midst of the bustling city allowing the group members to relax, unwind and produce some outstanding works of Art.

The Art escape project involves encouraging Artists, women in particular by using Art to explore their identities giving them the opportunity to learn, advance, develop, gain new skills, improve their confidence and hopefully also their lives in some way.

The workshops hope to encourage and inspire by studying and identifying with well known female artists some of which who have endured various setbacks in their lives and have overcome them through expression and therapy within their art. (Christine Morison)