Lush lives.

Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence * Laura Claridge * Clarkson Potter * $35

Madonna and Barbra Streisand are major collectors of her paintings, and her champions include painter Larry Rivers and The New York Times, which called her "the steely-eyed goddess of the auto age." But despite such grand admirers, Tamara de Lempicka remained critically overlooked until 1994, when her 1931 painting Adam and Eve (then part of Streisand's collection) sold at auction for $1.98 million.

Feminist historian Laura Claridge means to lift De Lempicka out of obscurity once and for all. Claridge unveils hidden details of the artist's often-scandalous life, notably in 1920s Paris, where her erotic paintings competed for gallery space with those of major figures like Kisling and Picasso. Revealed are De Lempicka's lifelong bouts of depression, her numerous affairs with her female subjects, and lots of reasons why De Lempicka deserves a more visible place in the canon of modern art.

Stephen Spender: A Life in Modernism * David Leeming * Henry Holt * $27.50

Spender a minor poet but is still considered one of the century's towering literary figures. A compatriot of Auden and Isherwood whose career spans seven decades, Spender the literary giant is illuminated here with precision and intelligence, though with little depth. Conclusions are careful, and facts about Spender's sexual ambivalence and complicated personal life are distilled in favor of analyses of his poetry.

Lorca: A Dream of Life * Leslie Stainton * Farrar, Straus, and Giroux * $35

Stainton's well-balanced portrait of Spain's greatest poet and playwright reveals a distinctly different Federico Garcia Lorca than history has previously presented. Here he's a martyr and a defiant homosexual, a vulnerable meal with few political impulses. Other revelations include Lorca's early authorship of children's puppet shows--and his affair with Salvador Dali.