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The retrospective mounted at the Galerie du Luxembourg in 1972 - the object of Lempicka's drawn out hesitations - provided occasion for a new, and, above all younger, generation to rediscover and admire Lempicka's oeuvre from the thirties. The extent of this show's success came as a surprise, and rewarded the artist with the feeling that her work was once again appreciated on the art market. Indeed, it became very much in demand, and many art lovers pressed her for more famous-titled works - such as "My Portrait" (B.115), "La belle Rafaëla" (B.87) - which would once again bear her renowned signature. Yielding to their pressure, she accepted to produce replicas of her most popular paintings. Unfortunately, she no longer had the same sure hand as forty or fifty years earlier, nor the same color perception that had lent a mauve cast to the originals: the copies she now created could in no way be taken for those originals. Meanwhile, for her own sake, she could be found - alone and in the silence of her studio - painting version after version of her venerated St. Anthony.
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