Mother and Child 1953

Tamara de Lempicka made this 'Mother and Child' painting with oil on canvas, and what strikes me right away is the almost architectural way she builds up her forms. It’s like she's designing a space more than describing one. The colour palette is super restrained, mostly grays and muted tones, but look at how she uses those blacks to create a real sense of depth, like in the sharp silhouette of the mother's face. The paint application is really smooth and controlled, and the lines are crisp, almost geometric. It’s as if she’s trying to find some solid structure beneath the surface of things, you know? This piece reminds me of Picasso's cubist portraits, not so much in style, but in the way that Lempicka breaks down the subject into these abstract shapes and then reassembles them in a way that feels both familiar and totally strange. It feels very self-assured, very modern, but there is ambiguity. It leaves space for more than one way of seeing.