Tamara de Lempicka's Birth Year Revealed as 1894

The true birth year of Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka has been confirmed as 1894, thanks to a document discovered by scholar Gioia Mori. The document, a conversion certificate from Judaism to Orthodoxy for three children including Tamara, dated 1897, was found by a Polish archivist and shared with Mori by producer Julie Rubio during preparations for an exhibition at the Fine Art Museum of San Francisco. De Lempicka had long claimed to be born in 1900 or even 1902, likely to appear younger and align herself with the new century. Born into a wealthy Polish Jewish family, she studied in Lausanne and France, married Count Taddeus Lempicki, had a daughter Kizette, and became a successful painter in Paris. After divorce, she married Baron Kuffner and moved to the US in 1943, where her fame grew until the 1950s. She died in Mexico in 1980. Her work, known for modern, Art Deco portraits of women inspired by Italian Renaissance and fashion, includes the iconic Self-Portrait in a Green Bugatti. She also painted religious subjects, notably Portrait of the Mother Superior, for which she refused $25,000.