Woman with a Green Glove 1928

Tamara de Lempicka made this painting, Woman with a Green Glove, with oil on canvas. The colours are cool and confident, but it's how she handles the paint that really grabs me. It's like she's sculpting with light and shadow, making the whole scene feel both glamorous and a little bit unreal. Look at the way she’s built up the form of the woman, the way the highlights on her skin seem to glow. There's a real tension between the sharp, almost architectural lines and the soft, rounded shapes of the body. The surface is so smooth, you can hardly see any brushstrokes, which gives it this polished, almost photographic quality. The green glove is the anchor point in the piece, grounding it in reality. De Lempicka really had something special and always managed to keep it fresh. Her work reminds me of someone like Francis Picabia who had this similar knack for staying ahead of the curve.