Private Collection 13.75" x 10" Attrib. with certificate She was born on 16 May 1898, in Warsaw, then part of Congress Poland of the Russian Empire . Her father was Boris Gurwik , a Russian Jewish attorney for a French trading company, and her mother was Malwina Decler, a Polish Catholic socialite who had lived most of her life abroad and who met her husband at one of the European spas. When she was ten, her mother commissioned a pastel portrait of her by a prominent local artist. She detested posing and was dissatisfied with the finished work. She took the pastels, had her younger sister pose, and made her first portrait. attributed to Tamara de Lempicka. In Paris, the Łempickis lived for a while from the sale of family jewels. Tadeusz proved unwilling or unable to find suitable work. Their daughter, Maria Krystyna "Kizette", was born around 1919, adding to their financial needs. Lempicka decided to become a painter at her sister's suggestion, and studied both at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts and Académie de la Grande Chaumière with Maurice Denis and then with André Lhote, who was to have a greater influence on her style. Her first paintings were still lifes and portraits of her daughter Kizette and her neighbor. She sold her first paintings through the Galerie Colette-Weil, which allowed her to exhibit at the Salon des independents, the Salon d'automne, and the Salon des moins de trente ans, for promising young painters. She exhibited at the Salon d'automne for the first time in 1922. During this period, she signed her paintings "Lempitzki"—the masculine form of her name.

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