Tamara de Lempicka, Calla Lilies (Arums), 1931
Oil on wood panel, 92 × 60 cm (36 1/4 × 23 5/8 in). Private Collection
© 2025 Tamara de Lempicka Estate, LLC/ ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
In Calla Lilies (Arums), Lempicka renders these sculptural blooms with the same sensual precision she once reserved for the human form. The calla lilies—elegant, elongated, and almost statuesque—rise from the canvas like figures cloaked in silence, their pale petals glowing against the shadows with an ethereal luminosity. Though often dated to 1941, the painting's stylistic clarity and Art Deco refinement unmistakably place it in the early 1930s, during a period when Lempicka’s mastery of form was at its most assured. Here, nature becomes both subject and symbol: purity and seduction intertwined, eternal and fleeting.