MEMORY KEEPERS INITIATIVE
featuring Furio Rinaldi
JAN 23, 2025 @ 7:30pm
TAMARA DE LEMPICKA: QUEEN OF ART DECO
With works that exuded cool elegance and transgressive sensuality, Tamara de Lempicka (1894–1980) helped define Art Deco. Her paintings captured the glamor and vitality of postwar Paris and the cosmopolitan sheen of Hollywood celebrity. Although she moved among the most influential circles in 1920s Paris, 1940s Hollywood and beyond, her identity as a queer woman has not been widely discussed. On the occasion of the first major museum retrospective of Lempicka in the United States at San Francisco’s de Young museum, Curator Furio Rinaldi offers an in-depth, multimedia presentation about the artist’s distinctive style and gender-defying life journey, as well has her iconic cultural influence among drag queens, pop stars, and celebrity collectors.
Ticket buyers to this event will receive a 20% discount on the Tamara exhibit at the de Young museum.*
*Offer valid online only for tickets to see Tamara de Lempicka at any available date between 1/23-2/2. This offer expires February 3, 2025. Not valid with other discounts.
Furio Rinaldi, Ph.D. is Curator in Charge of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, the department of prints, drawings, photographs of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), the largest collection of works on paper in Western United States. An expert on 15th- and 16th-century Renaissance drawings, particularly the schools of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo, he has published extensively on the subject in scholarly journals and international exhibition catalogues. Since his arrival at FAMSF, Furio organized a series of critically acclaimed and popular exhibitions, including Color into Line: Pastel from the Renaissance to the Present (Legion of Honor, 2021–2022) and Botticelli Drawings (2023-24), the catalogue of which has been named among the best art books of the year by The New York Times. His recent exhibition on Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka (currently at the de Young) was also praised by The New York Times as a “swaggering, sapphic and sensational show”.
Prior to his appointment as Curator in Charge, Rinaldi covered the role of curator of prints and drawings (2020-2024), and his curatorial experience also includes positions in the department of drawings and prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. He worked in the department of old master and 19th-century drawings at Christie’s New York. Rinaldi holds a Ph.D. in art history from the Università di Roma ‘Tor Vergata’ and an MA and BA in art history from the Università Statale di Milano, Milan. In 2022, he was appointed David and Julie Tobey Fellow of Italian Drawings at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.
MEDIA
works by tamara de lempicka
TAMARA DE LEMPICKA AT WORK
TAMARA DE LEMPICKA AT THE DEYOUNG MUSEUM
RAVE REVIEWS
"…a swaggering, Sapphic and sensational show…the 100 paintings and drawings deliver every inch of Lempicka’s luxuriant rigor, and they show us where the life pumps through it all."
- The New York Times
"…the retrospective is powerful and splendid."
- The Wall Street Journal
FEATURED ARTISTS
JACOB STENSBERG - Host
FURIO RINALDI - Speaker/Presenter
