Marie VASSILIEFF (Smolensk 1884 - Nogent sur Marne... Lot 128

Marie VASSILIEFF (Smolensk 1884 - Nogent sur Marne 1957) Dolls Oil on canvas of origin 54 x 85 cm Signed, localized and dated lower right and on the side Marie Vassilieff Paris 1938 Bears on the back on the frame the old labels James Bourlet &Sons and the handwritten mention marionnettes Provenance : Sale Chayette-Calmels 10.06.1987, lot 103 Acquired at this sale by the current owner A key figure of the Montmartre avant-garde at the beginning of the 20th century, Marie Vassilieff left her mark on the minds of her contemporaries with her originality, her generosity and her spirit. Born in Russia, she arrived in Paris in 1905, like many other Slavic artists attracted by the artistic effervescence of the capital. She discovered Henri Matisse at the Salon d'Automne, met him and became his student until 1910. That same year she began to exhibit at the Salon des Indépendants, the Salon d'Automne, and founded her own Russian Academy of Painting and Sculpture, then the Marie Vassilieff Academy. In 1914, the war is declared Vassilieff closes his Academy and replaces it by a Canteen which attracts many artists and personalities such as Apollinaire, Picasso, Braque, Soutine, Modigliani, Zadkine, Foujita, Utrillo, Chagall ... At the same time, Marie Vassilieff, who could not live exclusively from her art, began to make her first "portrait dolls" and to exhibit them, notably the one representing Pablo Picasso in Paul Poiret's private mansion in 1916. The creation of these dolls is inspired by the Russian folk tradition and becomes inseparable from his work, it is the mark Vassilieff. It pushes the codes and questions the limits between craft and art. Our painting is composed of, from left to right, a statue inspired by primitive art, a puppet and a wire sculpture. These three figures to which the artist gives life surround a baby, whose features we find the same in a painting made a few years earlier in 1921 entitled, A la Rotonde. The theme of childhood is a subject that she is particularly fond of and which will evolve throughout her work. This imaginary world of dolls and masks inhabits the artist's paintings but also her interior. One will find this part given to the marvelous in the work of great artists like Victor Brauner. In that the work and the glance of Marie Vassilieff is of a great modernity. It is also interesting to note that in the same year 1938, André Breton realized Composition de dérision funèbre en fil de fer polychrome, following his trip to Mexico during which he discovered a new world that fascinated him through its popular art marked by naive objects such as the "splendid funeral toys" as described by the master of surrealism. Vassilieff's work is avant-garde and resonates with the great movements of the history of art to come, such as Art Brut and Art Naïf.