French artists' model, singer, art dealer, collector and museum director
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (November 2019) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the French article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Dina Vierny]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Dina Vierny}} to the talk page.
Beginning at age 15, she was Aristide Maillol's muse for ten years, until his death in 1944 in a car crash.[2][3] After two years of modeling while clothed, she began work as a nude model.[2] During her career as a model, she also posed for Henri Matisse,[4]Raoul Dufy, and Pierre Bonnard.[2][3]
Both Matisse and Bonnard attributed a renewed inspiration for painting and sculpture to Vierny.[citation needed]
After Maillol moved to Banyuls-sur-Mer in 1939, she worked as a guide for the organization founded by Varian Fry to smuggle refugees out of occupied France[2] during World War II.[5] She was arrested by police in France and acquitted after a trial, and then left temporarily for Nice to pose for Henri Matisse before returning to Banyuls-sur-Mer.[2] She was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and spent six months in prison.[2]
In 1995, she founded the Fondation Dina Vierny-Musée Maillol and opened the Musée Maillol.[2][6]
Death
Vierny died in Paris, five days before her 90th birthday. She was survived by her two sons, Olivier Lorquin, director of the Musée Maillol in Paris, and art historian Bertrand Lorquin, the museum's curator.[2]
