‘Paris has always seemed to me the only city where you can live and express yourself as you please,’ wrote American author Natalie Clifford Barney in her memoirs. Barney hosted literary salons in her Saint-Germain-des-Prés home, fostering a spirit of independence and freedom that attracted guests including the painter Tamara de Lempicka, a liberated soul who embraced her bisexuality.
In the painting Self-Portrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti) (1929), Lempicka asserts herself as a true icon of the modern woman, in control of both her speed and her destiny. Along with Marie Laurencin, Lempicka was one of the most sought-after portraitists of the 1920s, known for her Art Deco paintings that blended neo-Cubism with the expressiveness of Italian Mannerism in cinematic compositions. She was also a regular at the salon of the American poet, playwright, and collector Gertrude Stein, a close friend of Picasso and a major figure in the Parisian intelligentsia.
Gertrude Stein’s sister-in-law, Sarah Stein, was a key supporter of Henri Matisse, facilitating his exhibitions in the United States through photographer Edward Steichen and encouraging him to open the Académie Matisse in 1908, where another rising figure in the City of Light, Marie Vassilieff, studied.
