Assia Granatouroff

Born

1911-11-06

Died

1982-05-17

Birthplace

Pervomaisk, Luhansk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, USSR [now Ukraine]

Biography

Assia, rarely referred to by her full name Assia Granatouroff, born in Bogopol (today Pervomaïsk, Ukraine) on October 6, 1911 and died on May 17, 1982 in Paris 15eme, was in the interwar period the nude model many Parisian photographers, painters and sculptors. Assia "embodies the very essence of nude photography at the time". Assia Granatouroff is the daughter of Échiel and Méchama Granatouroff. She has a brother, Hersch. She was three years old when her father, a democrat who refused the regime of Nicolas II, left for the United States, abandoning his family. It was therefore without him that his family experienced the beginning of the First World War and the horrors of the Russian Revolution. At the end of 1920, despite the disappearance of the monarchy in Russia, this father did not return to his country, but called his wife and children to join him in Paris, where he lived with his sister. The trip lasts almost a year. Assia was therefore almost eleven years old when she arrived in Paris. She was sixteen years old when she left home. She settled in rue de Rennes, near Montparnasse, which was then the center of artistic life in Paris. She practices drawing, makes floral motifs, which she sells to textile factories in the North, and sewing work. From 1930, she was a model for photographers like Roger Schall, who discovered her, Dora Maar, Germaine Krull, Ergy Landau, Emmanuel Sougez. Very quickly, she also posed for many sculptors (Charles Despiau, who named Assia one of her works, Aristide Maillol, Paul Belmondo, Chana Orloff) and painters (André Derain, Moïse Kisling, Kees van Dongen, Marcel Gromaire, Suzanne Valadon, Henry de Waroquier, Edmond Ceria). She began a theatrical career at the Vieux-Colombier which she continued under the direction of Charles Dullin. In 1935, she acted in several films at the cinema, notably "Les Yeux Noirs" by Victor Tourjansky. In 1940, Assia Granatouroff took refuge in the free zone. Arrested in 1943 in Cassis by the Gestapo with the actor Robert Lynen because Jewish, suspected of belonging (like him) to the Alliance network, she manages to be released and takes refuge in Switzerland. She francizes her name and is now called Granatour. Her husband was also arrested around 1941; he returned from captivity in 1944. The couple divorced in 1949. From 1950, she approached esotericism, and her artistic production turned towards a very personal symbolism. She creates compositions of flowers, of which she has a “spiritual perception”, and tapestries inspired by tarot cards. She exhibited between 1972 and 1978. She posed in particular for female photographers Dora Maar, Ergy Landau, Germaine Krull. For the latter, in the advertisement for Gibbs rice powder, the "Steel Valkyrie" gently grasps the object. A bone cancer prevails in a few weeks in May 1982.