By Noma Faingold

 “Each of my paintings is a self-portrait.” 

– Tamara de Lempicka

Filmmaker Julie Rubio first came face-to-face with Tamara de Lempicka’s seductive art at a hotel in Miami many years ago, when she was 21. 

“I’m sure they were copies, but I was drawn to the way she depicts women in her nudes,” Rubio said. “At first, the eyes seemed distant and then I connected to them.”

Thus began a decades-long fascination with the Russia-born artist, that eventually led to writing, producing and directing the documentary, “The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka and the Art of Survival,” having its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival with two screenings, Oct. 11 and 13.

Coincidentally, the first retrospective exhibit in the United States of Lempicka (1894-1980) will open at the de Young Museum on Oct. 12 and run through Feb. 9, 2025. The exhibition then travels to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, March 9 through May 2025.

 The elegant paintings and drawings, synonymous with Art Deco design/era, were so impactful to Rubio, who was born in Los Angeles and has lived in Orinda for 25 years, that she discovered, like Lempicka, she was bisexual. 

“Whether you identify as gay, straight, bi, or otherwise, love transcends labels. As a bisexual woman, It’s natural to experience love and attraction, regardless of gender. I’ve been happily married to a man for over 18 years, but for me, love is love in all its beautiful forms,” Rubio said.

Rubio actually started writing a narrative script 20 years ago, after meeting several of Lempicka’s family members at San Francisco’s Weinstein Gallery. Soon she was developing the project with granddaughter Victoria de Lempicka and great granddaughters Cristina and Marisa de Lempicka. 

Years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, finding financing for a period film with an unproven female director – who is best known for producing the 2014 feature film, “East Side Sushi” – was not happening. So, Rubio proposed pivoting to a documentary. Raising funds was still a challenge. Being on the board of the San Francisco nonprofit Women in Film, Rubio, now the board president, got a lot of support from the local organization. Her husband, Blake Wellen, became a co-producer.

While working on the doc for the last four and a half years, Rubio found that she related to Lempicka for other reasons, specifically growing up biracial, her father being Mexican and her mother white. Because Lempicka witnessed widespread anti-Semitism in Europe from World War I through the rise of Nazism, she hid her Jewish identity, even during the anything goes, roaring ’20s in Paris, where she was open about her sexuality, yet she “passed” as Catholic. She spoke French to further assimilate. She led a decadent lifestyle during those years, threw lavish parties and her art was celebrated. 

Rubio experienced prejudice growing up in Southern California. 

“I understood where Tamara was coming from. I heard racial slurs,” she said. “I was raised to not be proud of being Mexican. We were told to check the ‘white’ box.”

Through her exhaustive research, Rubio was able to obtain Lempicka’s real birth records in Russia, which revealed her actual birth name (Tamara Rosa Hurwitz, replacing previously known Tamara Rosalia Gurwik-Górska), date (it was thought she was born in 1898) and the fact that her grandparents were buried in a Jewish cemetery. 

It was a revelation to the members of the Lempicka family, several of whom are featured in the film, along with never-before-seen home movies. Rubio also shared her findings with co-curators of the Lempicka exhibit, Furio Rinaldi, curator in charge of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Gioia Mori, author, art history professor in Italy and leading Lempicka scholar.

The film aims to show what is behind Lempicka’s paintings. At certain periods, she lived a glamorous, privileged life, like when she was married to her first husband, Tadeusz Lempicki, until they had to flee Russia almost overnight in 1917 for Paris. 

“She was really giving the world a message through her paintings,” Rubio said.

 Paris was amazing until it was obvious the Nazis would invade France. In 1939, Lempicka and her second husband, Baron Raoul Kuffner, who was 17 years older and Jewish, sold their property and art and moved to the U.S. The couple, both bisexual, had an open marriage. But they were best friends. Her lovers were often models and muses and depicted in erotic poses.

In the U.S., Lempicka first lived in Beverly Hills then moved to New York. At that time, her paintings, which combined Cubism, Russian avant-garde, surrealism and 18th century Neoclassic styles, were not on trend. But she kept painting and experimented a bit. After her husband died, she moved to Houston in 1963, where her daughter Marie-Christine “Kizette” lived. Her last residence was at a serene property Cuernavaca, Mexico, until Lempicka died in 1980.

While filming in 2022, Rubio lost her mother, Elizabeth Anne Rubio, and her best friend, Wendy Alice Yorke Schroeder, within a month of each other. How Lempicka survived unrest and how she kept reinventing herself was an inspiration to Rubio to keep going. 

“In times of darkness, she was able to find the light and she kept creating,” Rubio said. “Like Lempicka, I can take something dark, go toward the light and make something beautiful.”

Lempicka’s most revered work today, in both the art market and in popular culture, is her sleek, theatrical portraits and female nudes, which still look modern. 

“She saw what women could be in the future. Her art speaks to the future,” Rubio said. “She had an imagination of what could be, not just for herself, but for all women.”

Collectors include Madonna and Barbra Streisand. At auction, Lempicka’s paintings have sold for $17 million to $21 million in the last few years, third highest among female artists. There has been a new recognition of her polished style. A Broadway musical called, “Lempicka,” had a run last spring. 

 The de Young exhibition features 60 paintings and 40 drawings, as well as a selection of Art Deco objects, sculptures and dresses from FAMSF’s collection that provide perspective on the artist’s process and historical context. It’s organized in four chronological sections. One centerpiece is the 1928 self-portrait, “Autoportrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti).” The painting, commissioned for a cover of the German fashion magazine, Die Dame, shows a stylish woman in charge of her own destiny.

Rinaldi, who spent three years researching and putting the “Tamara de Lempicka” exhibit together, anticipates visitors will see “her ambition, glamour and incredible talent. She’s not in the shadow of anyone. She was alone in her own greatness,” he said.

“The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka and the Art of Survival,” will have its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival. Two screenings: Oct. 11, 7 p.m., at Sequoia 2 and Oct. 13, 2 p.m. at The Lark Theater. Among the expected guests are Director Julie Rubio, Marisa de Lempicka and Victoria de Lempicka. Find more information at mvff.com.

“The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka and the Art of Survival” will be screened independently at San Francisco’s Roxie Theater, Oct. 26, 1 p.m. Director Julie Rubio is expected to attend. Learn more at roxie.com.

Tamara de Lempicka, the first U.S. retrospective of the artist, will be on display from Oct. 12 through Feb. 9, 2025, at the de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr. in Golden Gate Park.