Mariya Ivanovna VASSILIEVA, better known as Marie VASSILIEFF, was a Russian-born painter and set designer active in Paris. Maria Ivanovna VASSILIEVA was born on February 12, 1884, in Smolensk, Russia, into a wealthy family that encouraged her to study medicine. However, her passion lay in the arts, leading her to enroll at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg in 1903. In 1905, Maria moved to Paris, the artistic capital of the world at the time. There, she attended classes at the Académie de la Palette with Sonia DELAUNAY and at the Académie MATISSE with Olga MEERSON. She became an integral part of the artistic community in Montparnasse on the "Rive Gauche." In 1911, VASSILIEVA founded the Russian Academy of Painting and Sculpture, which quickly became a hub for avant-garde artists. By 1912, she had opened the "Académie Vassilieff," attracting artists such as Maria BLANCHARD, Nina HAMNETT, Amedeo MODIGLIANI, Ossip ZADKINE, Jacques LIPCHITZ, and Chaïm SOUTINE. The walls of her studio were adorned with works by Marc CHAGALL, MODIGLIANI, Pablo PICASSO, and Fernand LÉGER. In 1913, Fernand LÉGER gave a lecture on modern art at her studio. The following year, VASSILIEVA exhibited three cubist paintings at the Salon des Indépendants. During World War I, Maria VASSILIEVA closed her academy and opened a canteen for artists and models. She also volunteered as a nurse for the French Red Cross. In 1915, she returned to Russia and participated in two exhibitions, one in Petrograd and the other in Moscow. In 1916, she returned to France and reopened her canteen. The following year, she became a mother and painted numerous portraits of her son Pierre in a style similar to that of Fernand LÉGER. Her rag dolls and leather dolls gained fame and were celebrated in Berlin, New York, and London. In the 1920s, she designed costumes for the Swedish Ballet and created a series of "puppet furniture" for the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts. She also decorated two pillars of the Brasserie La Coupole in Montparnasse. Throughout the 1930s, she continued to exhibit her work and participated in the International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques in Modern Life. In 1949, she was honored with an exhibition at the Foyer d'Entraide aux Artistes et aux Intellectuels du Boulevard du Montparnasse. Maria VASSILIEVA spent her final years at the Maison Nationale de Retraite des Artistes in Nogent-sur-Marne, where she passed away on May 14, 1957. She was buried in the cemetery of Nogent-sur-Marne. After her death, VASSILIEFF's work was celebrated in several retrospective exhibitions, including "Marie Vassilieff (1884-1957) - Eine Russische Künstlerin in Paris" at the Verborgene Museum in Berlin in 1995 and "Marie Vassilieff dans ses murs" at the Musée du Montparnasse in 1998. In 2016, the City of Paris inaugurated the Villa Vassilieff, a new space dedicated to the visual arts in her former studio in Montparnasse. In 2022, several exhibitions celebrated VASSILIEFF's diverse body of work, highlighting her contributions to cubism, her dolls, and her costumes.