Sculptor, Painter, Free Spirit: Sara Lipska's Search for Beauty

sara_lipska_portret.jpg, default, Sarah Lipska, photo: public domain, Sculptor, Painter, Free Spirit:Sara Lipska's Search for Beauty

#photography & visual arts

She painted birds and, in many ways, she was herself like a colourful, fantastical bird. Gifted with courage and imagination, multitalented in every field she pursued, she sought beauty wherever she went. It’s astonishing that neither Poland nor France, her adopted homeland, remembers this great artist.

In 1927, there was an event that had all of the Paris art world talking. During the Salon d’Automne, the famed Dutch painter Kees van Dongen unveiled a portrait of a man with a bare torso, posed like a Buddha with a lotus flower in his palm. The painting was beautiful. A bare chest, divine aspirations – Paris in the twenties had seen it all. So why was it such a talking point? What made it sensational, controversial even, lay elsewhere: the man in the portrait was Antoine de Paris, also known as Antoni Cierplikowski, hairdresser to the Parisian creme de la creme. Not an artist, not an intellectual, not an aristocrat nor a president – but a hairdresser.

Although he was a friend to Josephine Baker, Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso, and highly esteemed in his profession (even famous), even progressive-minded French people needed time to accept that esteemed portraitists would elevate ‘craftsmen’ to the level of gods, not just the so-called ‘greats’ of this world (though Antoine certainly believed he belonged to them). But the definition of artist and artistry was steadily expanding. Greater respect was being given to applied arts, and the idea that fashion and interior design, or even hairdressing, could be considered on a par with ‘high art’ gained ground.

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Kees van Dongen, Portrait of Antoni Cierplikowski in Sarah Lipska's costume, 1927, photo: National Museum in Warsaw

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In van Dongen’s painting, the man’s bare chest is draped with a lavish necklace of large blue stones, he wears golden arm bracelets, and his head is crowned by an ornate sapphire helmet. From the press note published in Le Figaro, we learn the shiny patches on his blue trousers are gold-embroidered figures, and that the tunic is satin and tulle, as is the cloak.

This attire – worthy not just of the Buddha, but also of a Parisian hairdresser – was designed two years earlier by Antoine’s friend, Sara Lipska. She was a gifted costume designer as well as an accomplished sculptor, painter, illustrator, and designer. Like Cierplikowski, and other distinguished Polish women such as Olga Boznańska, Mela Muter, Helena Rubinstein, Lipska left Poland for Paris.

She arrived in the French capital in the winter of 1912, a 30-year-old single mother with a 4-year-old daughter. Earlier that year, back in Poland, she had already exhibited a painting at the Sztuka Society of Polish Artists – the only woman besides Boznańska to do so. Her pastel Doves, ornamented in a Secession-style, would later be displayed in Paris in the 1930s and today resides in Annie Partouche’s private collection. It’s the only known work by Lipska that clearly references her Jewish heritage. A beautiful Jewish woman in a pearl-embroidered golden dress and a pearl hairpiece sits in a golden chair against a blue-gold tapestry, birds at her feet – she could easily be a sister to the Parisian Buddha of 1927. It's unknown whether the pearly-gold dress from Lipska’s earliest painting was ever made, but comparing Antoine’s attire and the painting provides insight into her aesthetic: fantastical, visionary, inspired by Far Eastern art, overflowing with opulence and intricate details. ‘The Secessionist-oriental style and supple lines make the whole resemble a gold tapestry, with visible inspirations from oriental fabrics and art nouveau stylistics,’ wrote Ewa Ziembińska, a scholar of Lipska, in her biography Sara Lipska: Artystka Wszechstronna (Sara Lipska: Versatile Artist).

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Sarah Lipska, 'Portrait of a Woman', 1932, oil on canvas, photo © Musées de Poitiers, Ch. Vignaud

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Why a promising painter risked everything to start anew abroad remains unclear. It may have been due to rising antisemitic tensions, dreams of stretching her wings among the Parisian bohemia, or most likely personal circumstances and a desire to break away from a lover, an attempt that ultimately failed.

The Russian ballet

In Paris, Lipska was swept up by the wave of inspiration that spread through the 1920s and 1930s. Picasso had lived there since 1904. Modigliani arrived two years later, Chagall in 1910. That same year, the Ballets Russes staged Scheherazade at the Paris Opera, inspiring a newfound love in Parisians for Russian ballet and its visionary reformer Sergei Diaghilev. It had Vaslav Nijinsky dancing to Rimsky-Korsakov’s music. The show’s decorations and costumes were colourful and draped with gold – the show sparked a craze for orientalist styles, with turbans and wide sirwal trousers suddenly appearing on Parisian streets.

Sara Lipska’s life story has gaps in it – it’s unclear how she managed to start collaborating so quickly after arriving with Léon Bakst, the Ballets Russes’ chief set and costume designer. Under his guidance, she designed outfits inspired by Eastern art, earning such esteem that in 1914 she joined the company’s tour of England. Having trained as a painter and sculptor in Poland, she flourished in this new realm where fabric was the medium.

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Sarah Lipska, fabric, photo.© Musées de Poitiers, Ch. Vignaud

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She likely continued her association with Ballets Russes until Diaghilev’s death in 1929, and worked with other theatre groups designing costumes. Outfit creation – particularly mixing materials, colours, ornamentation and embroidered patterns – became her great passion. Her fairytale designs were hugely popular in the 1920s, ensuring her not only fame but income – crucial for a single mother.

Fashion

Lipska opened her first fashion salon at 4 Rue Balloni, likely in 1924 or 1925. By 1928, it had moved to the prestigious Avenue des Champs-Élysées, where it remained until 1939. She designed the boutique herself, embracing modern trends beyond Secession. It featured eye-catching glass and aluminium elements, including a glass coffee table, geometric aluminium chests, and an aluminium folding screen.

Her client list included Russian aristocrats and French stage actresses, who came to admire both the store and the visionary outfits, sewn from extraordinary fabrics. Her biorgrapher Ewa Ziembińska writes:

Many were adorned with metallic thread embroidery. These raised patterns achieved a bas-relief effect on the fabric. The density, richness and complexity of the designs made for highly decorative textiles. Lipska favoured floral, geometric and figurative motifs – depictions of people, animals, both real and mythical. She especially liked birds and unicorns.

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Sarah Lipska, dress, silk chiffon embroidered with wool, photo © Musées de Poitiers, Ch. Vignaud

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She embroidered on silk or satin – fantastical peacocks, women with outstretched arms, endless flowers. In 1925 at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, her embroidered tapestries won a gold medal, confirming not only her immense talent but also her popularity in the Parisian arts scene.

Her richly decorated and refined dresses were worn by American singer Ganna Walska, Helena Rubinstein – one of France’s most influential women in the 1920s – and the hugely popular actress Cécile Sorel.

The interior is what counts

From the early 1920s onwards, Lipska also became an interior designer, collaborating at Maison Myrbor alongside the likes of Picasso, Braque, Léger, Miró and Le Corbusier. Much like in her fashion designs, her interiors showed influences from the East and Secession, as notes Ziembińska, as well as art deco and geometric motifs. Her biographer also mentions that her interiors and furniture were praised in the introduction to Le Style Moderne, Contribution de la France by Henry van de Velde – this was the architect and designer credited by Walter Gropius as the teacher and reformer who changed people’s perception of industrial design and the applied arts.

One of Lipska’s most famous works was the modernist Glass House she designed for Antoine Cierplikowski at 4 Rue Saint-Didier in 1931. She was among the first to seriously explore glass as an interior design material.

Lipska exploited the transparency of glass and its effect on light – reflections and refractions. [...] Her floor-to-ceiling windows made a huge impression. Part of them used blue and red glass, which created a stained-glass effect. Light would bounce off polished stone floors and walls partly-covered with mirrors. In the dining room, there was a massive mirror in a gold frame on the ceiling above the table. The walls were lined with black glass panels, which, though opaque, reflected light and space wonderfully.

From ‘Sara Lipska: Artystka Wszechstronna’ by Ewa Ziembińska, trans. AZ

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Sarah Lipska, 'The Chest', circa 1925, aluminum and wood, photo © Musées de Poitiers, Ch. Vignaud

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Made of glass and metal, the house was reminiscent of a modern laboratory. Glass was used for the stairs placed in the middle of the arrangement, as well as the platforms and partition doors. The radiators were even concealed behind glass elements. But most striking of all was her eccentric glass coffin-bed, above which hung Antoine’s Buddha portrait in Lipska’s blue-gold attire. In the Interwar period, the combination of glass, metal and functional design (Antoine claimed he had never slept in a more comfortable bed) was truly innovative. Glass remained Lipska’s favourite medium, and after the war, she wrote of herself: ‘I was a pioneer in the use of glass in decorative arts.’

Alongside glass was metal. Raw aluminium elements could be found not just in her shop, but also in the interiors she designed. For example, she put a copper kitchen countertop in the home of book publisher Barbara Harrison. Lipska’s designs not only mirrored their era, they inspired a new trend.

As well as interior works, she produced fascinating objets d’art, such as a stunning glass perfume flask for Helena Rubinstein, shaped like a cone and looking like a woman in a lavish dress. She also designed store displays and posters for Rubinstein, and painted several of her portraits.

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Sarah Lipska, 'Helena Rubenstein', oil on canvas, photo: Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture.

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The muse of the master

How is it possible that a century later, Sara Lipska – a figure of such accomplishment and versatility – is effectively unknown in both her original and adopted countries?

In Poland, her art was overshadowed by her private life, specifically her long relationship with the famed Polish sculptor Xawery Dunikowski. She met him at 22 as a student joining the sculpture department of Warsaw’s Academy of Fine Arts (the first cohort of the new school). Her teacher was seven years her senior. One thing that certainly captivated him was her beauty – Dunikowski often painted her and bestowed her features upon his sculptures. But more than beauty, she had talent and a bold, open mind. Coming from a traditional Hasidic family, her decision to pursue art studies – especially in sculpture, a male-dominated field – showed how remarkably independent she was.

In 1906, Lipska and Dunikowski travelled together to Palestine and Syria, but rumours of their marriage there likely have no basis. In 1908, Lipska gave birth in Brussels to their daughter, naming her Xawera, who Dunikowski acknowledged as his. After she departed for Paris, Dunikowski joined her a little less than two years later in 1914 and befriended her circle. He remained in France for seven years (during WWI, he enlisted in the French army but was discharged for health reasons), returning to Poland in 1921 to take up a professorship in Kraków’s Academy of Fine Arts. They wrote each other letters until his death, always remaining friends. They immortalised each other in their works, and Lipska travelled to attend his exhibitions. She never had another long-term relationship with anyone else. His fame – including in Paris – led the arts community to see her primarily as his muse.

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Another reason she never gained the recognition she deserved may be that she never sought it. She created with passion and joy, yet was known for her self-criticism: ‘I am not satisfied,’ she would often say. The times were not favourable either – the fields where she did her best work, like sculpture, were seemingly reserved for men, or, as in the case of interior design, costumes and fashion, had only just begun to be considered art.

She survived the Second World War in hiding – as a Jew, Hitler’s Vichy regime threatened her life. After the war, she returned to theatre – her fantastical designs for a planned ballet called Dance of the Birds at the Paris Opera still survive, although it was never staged. In 1953, she won a contest to design a monument for the city of Narbonne’s famed socialist leader Léon Blum. She also started working with the French League for Bird Protection – returning to painting them. Her vibrant bird paintings – akin to the ones she embroidered for Ballets Russes dancers – are among her most intriguing works.

She continued to spend the rest of her life seeking new expressive forms and playing with materials. Surviving works include mosaic portraits made of beads and coloured glass, likely from the 1930s. She never abandoned her first artistic love, sculpture. The Centre Pompidou houses her red synthetic resin sculpture Head of Helena Rubinstein, likely from the 1930s, made from copper plating. ‘Full of vigour and vitality, she never lost the joy of creation, working well into old age. At 83, she sculpted the Head of Arthur Rubinstein,’ writes Ewa Ziembińska, noting: ‘One can see early Dunikowski’s influence in this work. [...] She devoted a lot of attention to rendering Rubinstein’s characteristic hairstyle.’ She won an award for it at the Salon de l’Art Libre in Paris’s Palais des Beaux Arts.

She died at age 91. She left relatively little behind – we can only read about many projects, e.g. the interior design of the Russian princess Natalie Paley, and no photos or detailed descriptions have survived. But Antoine's House of Glass has already been restored as faithfully as possible to the original. One of Lipska’s sculptures remains at the Centre Pompidou, and her fashion designs can be seen at the Musées de Poitiers and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Many of her works have been preserved in private collections and are only occasionally displayed in retrospective exhibitions.”

Originally written in Polish, Nov 2025, translated into English by Adam Zulawski, Nov 2025

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