Marie Vassilieff

Mariya Ivanovna Vassiliéva (Russian: Мария Ивановна Васильева), (February 12, 1884 – May 14, 1957), better known as Marie Vassilieff, was a Russian Empire painter.

She moved to Paris at the age of twenty-three and became an integral part of the artistic community on its left bank called, Montparnasse.

She was born in Smolensk, Russia to a prosperous family who encouraged her to study medicine. Her natural instincts, however, were for the arts and, in 1903 she switched to the study of art at the Academy in St. Petersburg. 1905 she visited the artistic capital of the world, Paris, France.

Two years later, she moved to Paris, taking a job as a correspondent for several Russian newspapers while studying painting under Henri Matisse and attending classes at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts.

In 1908 she founded the Académie Russe (Russian Academy), which was renamed the following year as, the Académie Vassilieff.

In 1912 she opened her own atelier in Montparnasse. It became the for those at the cutting-edge of art at the time, when Erik Satie, Henri Matisse, Nina Hamnett, Amedeo Modigliani, Ossip Zadkine, Olga Sacharoff, Juan Gris, and Chaim Soutine started dropping by in the evenings for conversation and occasionally to draw.

Before long the walls of Marie Vassilieff's atelier held a collection of paintings by Marc Chagall and Modigliani, drawings by Picasso and Fernand Léger, and in a corner, sat a sculpture by Zadkine.

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