Dina Vierny, histoire de ma vie racontée à Alain Jaubert

«And you Sir, the artist, how do you see this monument? – Oh, Mr. President, I see a lovely woman’s ass! » The monument which they are referring to is to be dedicated to Blanqui, the revolutionary, and the iconoclast who pronounced these words was – who would have guessed? – Maillol, known for his shyness… The autobiography of Dina Vierny (1919-2009), who was in her youth the sculptor’s favorite model, is full of spicy anecdotes of this type, regarding characters as diverse as Victor Serge, Jean Moulin, Auguste Perret, Gaston Deferre or Billy Wilder. That is because the young Russian who came from Odessa with her family after the Revolution was in circles with all the intelligentsia of the XXth century. And not only as a model: she was also a resistant, a collector (archaeology as well as dolls), a gallery owner (she discovered in particular Poliakoff, who had lived until then from his gains as a gypsy guitarist), nocturnal bookstore owner, and last but not least as the founder of the musée Maillol, which comfortably settled into the Paris cultural scene after an almost endless waiting period due to administrative problems.

• Dina Vierny, histoire de ma vie racontée à Alain Jaubert, Gallimard, 2009, 250 p., 22,50 €, ISBN : 978-2-07-078201-7