Sarah Lipska was born into a wealthy Hassidic Jewish family in Mława, Poland, which was at the time under the occupation of the Russian Empire. In 1904 she was admitted into the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, as one of its first women students. She chose to study sculpture, under the direction of Xawery Dunikowski (1875-1964), a Polish artist of some renown, with whom she became friends and would later have a daughter.
Towards the end of 1912, S. Lipska definitively left Poland for Paris, where she began to work with Serge de Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes at the Paris Opera. She collaborated with stage and costume designer Léon Bakst (1866-1924), alongside work with other Paris theatres: in 1922 she designed the set and costumes for the operetta ‘Annabella’ staged at the Théâtre Femina, with the costumes created by the Myrbor fashion house.

In her innovative interior design, S. Lipska would put to use, quite unconventionally, different thick industrial glasses, such as that designed for Antoine de Paris’s Maison de verre. This inclination indisputably places her among the era’s avant-garde designers. Her interior and furniture designs are included in Le Style moderne. Contribution de la France, published in Paris in 1925, with an introduction by the architect Henry van de Velde.
S. Lipska was also a passionate fashion designer. Her clothes were sold in boutiques from Montparnasse and the Champs-Élysées to Monte-Carlo. Helena Rubinstein, actors Alla Nazimova and Cécile Sorel, and opera singer Ganna Walska were among her clients. Inspired by colours and patterns used in some Asian clothing, her most remarkable creations are her embroideries, richly decorated with stones, pearls and golden threads, and at times resembling high-relief sculpture.

In her sculpture S. Lipska often experimented with various mediums, using synthetic resin, copper leaf, glass and pearls, modelling in clay, casting sculptures in plaster and artificial stone as well as carving in wood. Notable personalities from the worlds of art, music, literature, science and politics posed for her sculpted portraits. When painting, she focused particularly on form and colour. Birds are a recurring motif, omnipresent in her work. In the 1950s she worked with the dancer Serge Lifar on the never-staged Ballet des oiseaux, creating models for sets and costumes.
Among her many collaborations, it is worth mentioning those with H. Rubinstein, for whom S. Lipska designed shop window displays, advertising posters, perfume bottles and packaging, with the couture designer Paul Poiret and with the architect Adrienne Gorska, with whom she worked on the modernisation of Barbara Harrison’s house in Rambouillet. She created the Monument en hommage à Léon Blum (1953) in the centre of Narbonne.

S. Lipska first exhibited her work in 1912: a pastel drawing, Gołębie (Pigeons), shown first in Warsaw then in Berlin. She participated in the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, winning a gold medal. Her work was also included in the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition and at the 1937 International Exposition of Arts and Technology in Modern Life. In the latter she presented L’Oiseau et l’Avion[The Bird and the Plane] in the aeronautics pavilion, again winning a gold medal. That same year she exhibited the Masque d’homme [Mask of Man] at the Women Artists in Europe exhibition held at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. She also took part in the Paris Salons: the Salon d’Automne, the Salon des indépendants and the Salon des Tuileries.
S. Lipska’s works are held in numerous collections: in the Musée des années 30 in Boulogne-Billancourt; Musée Sainte-Croix Museum in Poitiers; Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de la Ville de Meudon; Bibliothèque-Musée de l’Opéra National de Paris; Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou; Musée Despiau-Wlérick, Mont de Marsan; Musée Alphonse-Georges Poulain, Vernon; Polish Library in Paris; Muzeum Rzeźby im. X. Dunikowskiego w Królikarni, oddział Muzeum Narodowego, Warsaw; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Smithsonian Design Museum in New York.