Since 2021, AWARE has been based at the Villa Vassilieff, in the 15^th arrondissement of Paris. The organisation has created a welcoming space for research by anyone interested in the history and creation of women and non-binary artists. It organises conferences, encounters, residencies, screenings and workshops.

Conceived by designer matali crasset, the Villa’s open, colourful and warm spaces are imbued with a spirit of conviviality. The Villa houses both a research residency and a room dedicated to cultural education. On the upper floor, the team’s office coexists with the research and documentation centre, which welcomes, by appointment, researchers, students, and anyone interested in accessing the available resources. This centre contains specialised publications on women artists and gender theory.

The building is named after Marie Vassilieff, who established her studio in the impasse in 1912. She turned it into a place to welcome artists and thinkers from all over the world for encounters, trainings, parties, and a canteen. As part of this legacy, AWARE sees the Villa Vassilieff as a place for intergenerational exchange, linking the local to the international, the contemporary scene to cultural history, the contents of this website to its in-situ programming.

History of the Villa

In November 1912, Russian artist Marie Vassilieff moved into her new studio in the impasse located at 21 Avenue du Maine. Shortly afterwards, she founded her own academy. Marie Vassilieff was quickly noticed in the salons and became an important figure of the Parisian avant-garde movements. She developed a multi-faceted body of work, combining references to Russian folk art, pictorial innovations heralding European modernity, decorative arts and the performing arts.

The Académie Vassilieff, like the artist’s practice, was a place of education at odds with Beaux-arts traditions. She introduced a free and flexible approach while advocating for the decompartmentalisation of artistic practices, and adopted more horizontal methods, based on exchange. Within this framework, she regularly invites her artist friends to participate. In this way, the Académie Vassilieff reflects an avant-garde, multidisciplinary and international scene. It brings together many student-artists from different horizons: the Spaniard Maria Blanchard, the Yugoslavian Hélène Dorotka, but also other artists better remembered by the history of art, such as Ossip Zadkine and Amadeo Modigliani.

In 1914, the First World War broke out and the pre-war effervescence abruptly subsided. The nightlife of Montparnasse was annihilated by the poverty and misery that set in. So, Marie Vassilieff adapted to the new environment, transforming her Academy into a canteen of solidarity, primarily to meet the needs of her artist friends. Hailing from all over Europe, they had enlisted for France and returned from the front with no means of support, scarred by the war. The canteen stayed open all night and Marie Vassilieff served meals for modest sums. In this way, she helped to perpetuate a unique place of artistic exchange in this context, in a spirit of solidarity and festivity. The Vassilieff Canteen closed in 1917 but was reopened during the economic crisis of 1929.

During the inter-war period, the alley’s activities were renewed, with the same abundance of practices. Artists and artisans – printers and lithographers, coopers, glass painters, upholsterers – coexisted. In 1930, the Gromot and Arretche architectural studio of the Grande Masse des Beaux-Arts de Paris moved into the former premises of the Vassilieff canteen. The spirit of conviviality persisted, bringing together all professions, without hierarchy, at the many parties that enlivened the alley.

However, this rich local history came under threat. Construction of the Tour Montparnasse in April 1970 marked a turning point for the neighbourhood. These architectural and urbanistic changes had an impact on the life of the small Montparnasse studios. But at 21 Avenue du Maine, collective artistic spaces continued to develop. In 1972, Annick Lemoine and her partner Annette Englebert recreated a multidisciplinary contemporary art studio in the former living and creative space run by Marie Vassilieff.

The history of the Académie Vassilieff was finally recognized in 1998, with the opening of the Musée du Montparnasse. Although the impasse was up for sale and under threat, the Paris City Council finally implemented the museum project proposed by local residents. The Villa Vassilieff, which since the turn of the last century had been the centre of the district’s cultural life, was chosen to house the future museum. It opened in 1998 with an exhibition entitled “Marie Vassilieff, dans ses murs”, in honour of the artist and her initiatives, and until 2013 would offer numerous exhibitions linking the history of Montparnasse and contemporary creation.

Villa Vassilieff would officially give its name to the impasse at 21 Avenue du Maine in 2004. The consecration of Marie Vassilieff’s legacy finally came in 2012, when the French government recognized the Villa’s historical value.

Following the closure of the Musée du Montparnasse in 2013, a branch of the Bétonsalon art and research centre moved to the Villa Vasslieff in 2015. This space, with its artist residencies, aimed to enhance the history of the Villa and the neighbourhood, through a contemporary perspective and archive-based work.

Today, the Villa Vassilieff, witness to a rich artistic past, as well as collective, multidisciplinary and feminist initiatives, houses AWARE’s offices and research center.