Tamara Lempicka - Beyond Borders

The largest permanent holding of Tamara de Lempicka’s work in any Polish public museum, in the words of the museum’s own audio guide: pieces the National Museum in Lublin bought in 2023, on show at Lublin Castle since 23 June 2023. The museum lists it among its temporary exhibitions, but gives no closing date and describes it as a step towards a permanent Lempicka gallery at the castle.

The National Museum in Lublin on the exhibition:

Sustained interest in Łempicka’s work, together with cooperation with the painter’s family and the Tamara Lempicka Estate foundation they run, has allowed the National Museum in Lublin to begin a wide-ranging effort to create a permanent exhibition at Lublin Castle devoted to the life and work of Tamara Łempicka.

The collection acquired by the Museum, consisting of 14 canvases and 7 works on paper, is of great scholarly value to researchers of the artist’s work because of its comprehensive character, representing every period of the painter’s output - from the 1920s to the 1970s.

Our translation from the museum’s Polish page. The museum’s English URL for this exhibition currently carries the Polish text.

What to expect

The core of the show is a group of works bought from Victor Manuel Contreras, the Mexican sculptor who was the artist’s closest friend. The museum put 18 of them on display in June 2023 and added three more from the same collection that November. According to the museum’s English audio guide, the rooms are arranged by theme and supplemented with paintings, drawings and archive films lent by Lempicka’s family.

This is a display that keeps changing. In October 2024 the museum published new research on Lempicka’s biography and announced that it would show the passports of Tamara and Tadeusz Łempicki. Check the exhibition page before you go rather than relying on older press coverage.

Works worth finding (English titles as in the museum’s audio guide):

• Reared Horses (1925) - an early charcoal sketch that the audio guide links to the equestrian statue of Peter the Great in St Petersburg.
• Lemon - a 1940s still life the museum cites as showing the pull of the old masters and her training in André Lhote’s studio.
• Dutch Girl II (1957) - her own replica of a 1941 canvas; the audio guide points out borrowings from Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch.
• Washerwoman - a 1960s picture painted with a palette knife, in a late manner a long way from the portraits on the posters.
• Two paintings each titled Abstract Composition - proof that late in life she also turned to abstraction.

Context

Tamara de Lempicka (Łempicka in Polish) is one of the best-known painters of Art Deco. She made her name in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s with sleek, cool portraits of wealthy sitters, moved to the United States in 1939 and spent her last years in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she died in 1980.

Lublin’s claim to her runs deeper than one purchase. In 2022 the museum staged the first Lempicka exhibition ever held in Poland, “Tamara Łempicka - A Woman on the Move” in our rendering of the Polish title, which drew more than 86,000 visitors. Before 2023 Polish state collections held just two of her paintings, one in the National Museum in Warsaw and one in the Mazovian Museum in Płock.

Tickets and time

A ticket for this exhibition costs 40 PLN, reduced 20 PLN, separate from the permanent galleries. You can buy it online through the museum’s ticket system , at the box office or from the machines in the castle courtyard. If you want the whole castle, the combined ticket that includes the temporary exhibitions costs 80 PLN (reduced 60 PLN) and is sold at the box office only.

The exhibition is open every day, Mondays included: Monday to Thursday and Sunday 9:00-18:00, Friday and Saturday 9:00-19:00. On Mondays, when the permanent galleries are shut, it is one of the few parts of the castle you can visit. From October the museum switches the permanent galleries to winter hours; it does not say whether this exhibition follows suit, so check before you travel.

The museum announces its free-admission days month by month. In September they cover this exhibition (unlike “The Time of the Samurai”), and the last free day this month is 30 September.

Allow 45-60 minutes, longer with the audio guide, which runs to more than 50 tracks.

English on site: the museum publishes an English audio guide for this exhibition on its website, alongside Polish, audio description and Polish Sign Language versions. It does not say whether the wall labels are in English, so load the English audio guide on your phone before you go.

Who it is for: anyone who knows Lempicka from prints and posters and wants to see how her painting changed after the Paris years. If you are travelling a long way for one particular famous 1920s Art Deco portrait, ask the museum first: the audio guide discusses, for example, the 1929 Self-Portrait in a Green Bugatti, but does not say whether the original hangs in Lublin.

Events

• 26 September 2026, 10:00 - guided tour of the exhibition; the listing is published in Polish only and does not name the tour language - details in the museum’s September events listing .

What the press says

No English-language coverage of the Lublin display was found. The Polish reporting, in our words:

dzieje.pl / PAP (23 June 2023, Michał Szukała): the opening report - 18 works bought for 8.5 million PLN from the prime minister’s reserve fund, some of them never shown in public before - link .

dzieje.pl / PAP (30 November 2023, Gabriela Bogaczyk): a rehang with three more works, a timeline of the artist’s life and family mementoes from her daughter Kizette’s collection - link .

Radio Lublin (1 January 2024, RyK, ed. DySzcz): a review of the year - 16,000 people saw the show between its opening and the end of 2023; the curator counts 22 objects, the museum’s exhibition page 21 - link .

RMF FM (3 October 2024, Dominik Smaga): the museum’s archival research moves the artist’s birth year to 1894 and establishes the date of her wedding to Tadeusz Łempicki - link .

dzieje.pl / PAP (3 October 2024): four more works joined the display, two paintings from private collections and two drawings from the family’s collection - link .

No critical reviews were found; everything published is news and reporting. Museum curator Łukasz Wiącek told Radio Lublin that the aim was to show how Lempicka’s style changed as she tried to find her place in each new decade of her life (Radio Lublin, 1 January 2024, link ).

Updates

• 2024-10-03 - the museum publishes Dr Katarzyna Mieczkowska’s research on the artist’s biography and announces that the passports of Tamara and Tadeusz Łempicki will go on show (source: museum page ).

See also

• National Museum in Lublin (Lublin Castle) - the profile, with hours and directions; the same building holds the permanent galleries and the Holy Trinity Chapel with its 1418 frescoes.
• The Time of the Samurai - the castle’s other temporary exhibition, open only until 27 September 2026; if you are in Lublin this week, see both.
• Holy Dialogue - sacred art from the Catholic University of Lublin museum in the Trinitarian Tower, until 31 October 2026; a good follow-up if Lempicka’s religious paintings of the 1940s catch your eye.

Tickets, opening hours and current information are available on the National Museum in Lublin’s website .

Museum profile: National Museum in Lublin (Lublin Castle) .