Stylistic development

In the late fifties, Lempicka was quite bewildered as to her painting career. She reached out in various directions, and, for a time, worked "in the manner of ..." various artists. For instance, she reverted to several of her own previous still lifes, reinterpreting them in the manner of Georges Braque (see "Apple, Quince, Grapes" I and II [B.373]). She was also attracted to the elongated style characteristic of Bernard Buffet. At this stage of her development, Lempicka began working with a palette knife, discovering a taste for the paint matter itself, and for the looser contours of directly applied colors. This looked like the opening she had been waiting for, so she applied herself to this technique with uttermost diligence, producing a great number of still lifes and new versions of former compositions. However, this artist's basically versatile nature motivated her to renew with abstraction from time to time. Thus, in the early sixties, she undertook a series of paintings obviously inspired by the abstract painter Serge Poliakoff (1900-1969). Reverting to a figurative approach, Lempicka next turned to landscapes and animals, depicting (often in double) pigeons, roosters, rabbits, swans... In consideration of the ocher red dominating this period of her production, Lempicka grouped these works under the general heading of "terra-cotta". They were set on display at a retrospective show at the Ror-Volmar Gallery in Paris (in 1961), and reappeared the following year at the Alexander Iolas Gallery in New York. Commercially speaking, both shows were absolute fiascos, which wounded the artist to the core. She slowed down her production and, in her bitterness, maintained that she was through with exhibitions. Her idea was to continue working on a limited number of recurrent themes, creating several series such as cutlery and bottles on a table, bouquets of flowers, baskets and bowls of fruits. By the end sixties, her production comprised many replicas.