Marevna

Marevna (Maria Bronislavovna Vorobyova-Stebelskaya) (1892 – 1984).

Russian artist and memoirist of Russian-Polish descent, belonged to the Paris school.

The daughter of a Polish nobleman and Russian actress. About her childhood she later wrote as follows:

“When I think about my childhood, I like to inhale again the aromas of wild steppe, raw wood on the banks of the Volga and Kazanka, the smells of a vast forest, fallen leaves, autumn. I was born in a village near Cheboksary. ”

The “Village” near Cheboksary is the city of Mariinsky Posad, now the district center of Chuvashia. My father was transferred to the Caucasus and she ended up in Tiflis, where she began to study painting, and in 1910 she came to Moscow, entered the Stroganov School, studied with Osip Zadkin.

In 1912 she moved to Paris, settled in Hive. She became close to the Cubists, made friends with Picasso and other inhabitants of the artistic Montparnasse, the closest – with Emil Leger and Chaim Soutine. For six months, she was a lover of Diego Rivera, in 1919 she gave birth to a daughter, Marika, who later became an actress. She was engaged in applied art, worked for various fashion houses. The nickname, which became the artist’s pseudonym, was given to her by Maxim Gorky, whom she met on Capri.

Since 1948 she lived in England. Created a series of portraits of artists of Montparnasse. Participant of exhibitions since 1912: Parisian salons – Tuileries, Independents; Russian art in London, Paris; “Neo-Impressionism” (New York, 1968); “Women Artists of the Paris School” (Geneva, 1975) and others.

A collection of works is available in museum and private collections in Paris, London, Geneva, etc. She wrote a book of memoirs, “My Life with Hive Artists,” after the publication of which a huge part of her creative heritage was bought out by the Petit Palais Museum of Modern Art in Geneva. In 2004, the State Tretyakov Gallery hosted a personal exhibition of the artist’s works.

She developed an original synthesis of cubism and pointillism.

The exhibition of Marevna and Montparnas for the centenary of the artist (1992) was held in London. In Russia, a retrospective of the works of Marevna was presented at the Tretyakov Gallery in 2004. Then in Russia her memories of the Paris period were published.

Works are in museums and private collections.