Announcements
Upcoming premiere
East Meets West Productions LLC proudly announces the premiere of its highly anticipated documentary, "The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & The Art of Survival," set to premiere this fall. Details on dates and times will be released soon.
"The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & The Art of Survival" Playing at the de Young Museum of San Francisco
“The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & The Art of Survival” will screen in its entirety at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, as part of the highly anticipated de Lempicka retrospective, which opens October 12, 2024. This event is expected to draw significant attention from art and film enthusiasts alike, providing a platform for Rubio's film to reach a diverse audience.
The San Francisco’s Fine Arts Museum’s curators, Gioia Mori and Furio Rinaldi, are interviewed throughout the documentary, and offer deep insights into Lempicka's artistic journey and delve into her art and training. Gioia Mori entrusted director Julie Rubio with her life-long archive and Rubio was able to include her valuable research within the film. Upon viewing the documentary, the curators sought permission to incorporate the groundbreaking findings resulting from Rubio’s years of intensive research into the retrospective exhibition. After much consideration and conferring with her sources, including the esteemed journalist Monika Krajewska from Discovery, Fakty TVN Poland and the Lempicka family, Rubio agreed to share the new archival evidence with the exhibition. The museum curators ensured confidentiality and formally agreed that they would rightly credit Julie Rubio, the documentary, and her sources in the curatorial forward of the exhibition Yale catalog, for this revolutionary discovery that was first disclosed in the documentary.
When Rubio set out to make the first feature-length documentary film about the third most valuable female modern artist in the world, she had no idea how relevant and groundbreaking it would be or how it would reshape art history. It has long been documented that Tamara de Lempicka, originally known as Tamara Rosalia Gurwik-Górska, was born on May 16, 1898. However, Rubio’s findings have revealed that this was not her true name. Rubio unearthed a new certificate belonging to Tamara de Lempicka, indicating her original name as Tamara Rosa Hurwitz and her true birth year 1894. This new information, regarding Lempicka's birth date and the Hurwitz family's conversion from Judaism to Calvinism, sheds light on her determination and the reasons behind her lack of transparency. Tamara lied in order to survive. These actions, including concealing her Jewish heritage and family’s history of persecution, were essential for her and her family’s survival, rather than deceitful fabrications. Contemporary research often overlooks these significant aspects of Lempicka’s life, diminishing the depth of her resilience and adaptation.
Reevaluating Lempicka’s narrative with empathy and insight reveals a complex journey of a Jewish survivor. Her artwork, characterized by its bold, stylized Art Deco portrayal of the human form, serves as a vibrant testament to her experiences. Through her paintings, Lempicka not only captured the era’s zeitgeist but also encoded her struggles, resilience, and identity into her paintings. The film highlights that an attack on art and artists is an important - and dangerous - warning sign for other freedoms that we hold so dear.
This deeper appreciation of Tamara de Lempicka’s experiences, artwork, and legacy highlights her remarkable survival and the profound impact of her story in understanding the resilience of all refugees, and using her pain to create something beautiful.
See article: “Tamara De Lempicka Falsified Her Date of Birth, the Mystery of Her Age Was Revealed Thanks to an Archival Document” Metropolitan Magazine - Here
See article: “Gioia Mori, the Last Mystery of Tamara de Lempicka Falls,” ANSA Magazine - Here
For more information, see Julie Rubio - Wikipedia: Here