Assia Granatouroff

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.