Villa Marie vassilieff

The studio at twenty-one avenue du Maine sits tucked behind a garden wall, identifiable by its humble, low-slung wooden structure. In nineteen twelve, the Russian artist Marie Vassilieff built this space to host an academy for painters, but it quickly became the canteen for the Montparnasse art scene during the First World War. When food was scarce, she served affordable, nourishing meals to starving artists like Fernand Leger and Amedeo Modigliani, often accepting small sketches as payment for a bowl of soup.