MARIE MAREVNA VOROBIEFF (1892-1984) Lot n° 370

MARIE MAREVNA VOROBIEFF (1892-1984) Landscape Ealing (1), 1982 Charcoal drawing on paper, signed with inscriptions in the lower left corner. Size: 25 x 38 cm Provenance: Marevna Studio sale, Roseberys, London, 5 December 2018, lot 245, where purchased by the previons owner, Philips Family Collection. Exhibition: 'Marevna: Paintings and Works on Paper 1915-1975', 1989, England & Co, London no.57&58 A pointillist painter of Russian origin born in Cheboksary who became British, she began her career in Tbilisi before studying at the Stroganov Academy of Fine Arts in Moscow where she discovered the Italian Primitives, Impressionism and Fauvism. It was during a meeting in Capri with Gorki that the latter nicknamed her "Marevna" after the "Little Princess of the Sea". Arriving in Paris in 1912 to continue her studies, she joined "La Ruche" and met Orloff, Lipchitz, Zadkine but also Soutine, Chagall, Kisling, Modigliani, Léger, Braque, Matisse, Foujita and Picasso at the Rotonde, Picasso who said to her "We will make you an artist even more famous than Marie Laurencin". In 1915, she met the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg, who sold her paintings, but especially the Mexican painter Diego Rivera, with whom she had a passionate and tumultuous relationship for six years. From this union, Marika was born in 1919 and educated alone while continuing her career as a painter, helped by patrons such as Leon Zamaron and Leopold Zborowski. In 1942 she arrived in Saint-Paul-de-Vence and set up her studio behind La Colombe d'Or. She painted many times the ramparts of the village, making them sparkle through the prism of her pointillism, in the azure light. In 1949, she followed her daughter to England and settled in London from 1958 until her death. The collector Oscar Ghez acquired more than 150 of her paintings and encouraged her to exhibit in France, Switzerland, Japan, Israel and the United States where she participated in the Neo-Impressionist Retrospective at the Guggenheim Foundation in New York. She died at the age of 92 and was buried in Mexico City, in the base of the large head sculpted by Diego Rivera, whom she loved until her last breath.