TAMARA DE LEMPICKA | Trois Nus

Barry Friedman Gallery, New York (acquired by 1985)
Private collection, New York (and sold: Sotheby's, New York, February 11, 1987, lot 66)
Private collection, Paris (acquired at the above sale) 
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Alain Blondel, Tamara de Lempicka, Catalogue Raisonné, 1921-1979, Lausanne, 1999, no. B.122, illustrated p. 210

It has not been possible to see the work entirely unframed. The canvas is wax lined and there is a protective cloth backing. Examination under UV light reveals areas of retouching in places, most predominately to the lower figure's thighs, hip, torso and proper right arm and to the middle figure's back and proper left shoulder. There is some frame rubbing along the extreme edges. There are a few superficial scratches in places and a few scattered small pigments losses notably to the upper part of the right edge. There are pinholes at intermittent points along the extreme edges. This work is in overall fairly good condition.
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This work was painted circa 1929, during the same period as Femmes au bain, the painting of a group of female nudes that bears a clear relationship to Le Bain turc by Ingres. Lempicka’s female nudes share the pearly, silky sheen of the flesh belonging to Ingres’ odalisques — smooth, shiny, porcelain-like skin — but also the exaggerated female curves that are deliberately removed from anatomical reality. The Mannerist style of the subjects in Trois nus (their accentuated musculature) can also be traced back to Lempicka’s in-depth study of sculpture. These female nudes, which critics classified at the time as “archaic” and “heavy and corpulent”, are echoed most clearly in the contemporaneous sculptures of Aristide Maillol. But this manner of representing the female form in a deliberately powerful and full-bodied way was a trend that many artists of the 1920s participated in, as can be seen, for example, in Picasso’s Baigneuses. Their angular, mechanical appearance also calls to mind the Purist figures in Fernand Léger’s work.

In addition to the liberties taken in regard to established conventions concerning the female body, this work also takes on an erotic charge. “As an emancipated, modern woman, Tamara de Lempicka has made her life a manifesto of independence and transgression, including sexual transgression.” (Michel Georges-Michel, Une Reine du bizarre [A Queen of the Bizarre], Aux Ecoutes, 16 June 1961). Finally, the composition of Trois nus is remarkable. Represented from below, it creates a perspective distortion that creates a superb upward movement, giving these figures a beautiful soaring effect.