Aristide Maillol and Dina Vierny at Banyuls
A story of creative collaboration, of the Resistance — and a suspicious death
Last week I visited a museum just outside the French coastal town of Banyuls-sur-Mer, close to the frontier with Spain. It lies just off the back road that snakes up to the Coll de Banyuls, the pass that bisects the Albera massif, midway between Banyuls and the small town of Espolla, on the Spanish side of the border.
I have driven down this road many times, but have never, until now, visited the museum dedicated to the work of Aristide Maillol, which was once the sculptor’s home.
Maillol — the name and the man — has a particular significance in my life just now. For one thing, our house, in the village of Rabós, just across the Spanish border, was for a long time the property of a man called Maillol, who kept his animals and made wine and oil in the basement of the house (where currently I am writing). People in the village speak highly of him; say he was a quiet, gentle sort. For another, a friend of mine, a Catalan poet, was writing about Maillol the last time I met up with him in Barcelona. I was about to contact him last week, about Maillol, when someone told me that he had died, last July, shortly after a diagnosis of liver cancer. These things add up.
The word Maillol (pronounced mael-yol) refers to a small vine, which also seems appropriate, given the ubiquity of vineyards hereabouts.
Aristide Maillol’s Greek forename pre-empted not only his deep indebtedness to classicism, but also references the landscape of ‘Greek Catalonia’, in which he was raised, Banyuls being midway between the ancient Greek settlements of Roses and Collioure. “This landscape,” wrote Maillol, “is Greece, but less wild, less grand . . .”
An essay by Mario Negri emphasises the “classicism” of the great Catalan sculptor, and the positioning of his work in reference to Greek art. Negri regards Maillol as being “detached from time . . . operating without haste, lost and immersed in the dream of rediscovering and reviving an ancient classicism”. Maillol, he says, was a simple man who had the rare ability to stay with a single idea for a long time, and to develop that idea with patience and humility. He liked to compare his own efforts in painting or sculpture to those of an artisan or a potter.
Maillol and his Muse
Born in Banyuls, on the Côte Vermeille of Southwestern France in 1861, Maillol travelled to Paris as a young man, intent on studying painting. After failing the entrance exam on the first few attempts, he was eventually accepted at the École des Beaux-Arts. During this time he endured great poverty, even suffering from malnutrition, and was hospitalised several times. However, he soon became disillusioned with the academic styles of painting on offer and fell under the influence of Paul Gauguin. He never stopped painting, but started to make a living as a tapestry designer and returned to Banyuls to set up a tapestry workshop there. It was only in his late thirties that he discovered sculpture, the form to which he was to devote himself for the rest of his life.
In 1905, a plaster version of his sculpture La Méditerranée — modelled on his wife, Clotilde — was exhibited at the 1905 Salon d’Automne in Paris. The piece caused a sensation at the time and established his reputation as a sculptor. From then onward he concentrated almost exclusively on the female form, and in 1935, at the age of 73, he was introduced to a young model named Dina Abinder (later Vierny). Dina’s parents were Russian Jews from Odessa who migrated to Paris when Dina was seven years old. She was fifteen when she first met Maillol. She began modelling for him shortly afterwards.
This might sound a little suspect to modern ears, but Malliol differed from many of his contemporaries, who regarded having sex with their models as an automatic right — Auguste Rodin, Jacob Epstein and Augustus John spring to mind.
For the first two years Dina only posed with her clothes on, because Maillol was too shy to ask her to remove them. Eventually, as she explains in her book Histoire de ma vie, it was Dina who suggested that she pose nude, saying to the sculptor: “Maillol, don’t be afraid to ask me to take off my clothes. I’m a member of the Friends of Nature (Amis de la Nature), which is a thing of my generation. Nudity is purity. Musset wrote: ‘All truly beautiful hearts reveal their beauty’. Maillol was shy, reserved, but he was literary. He was touched by this phrase from Musset. And we began to work seriously.”
She also makes clear the nature of their relationship: “Contrary to what might be imagined, there was nothing carnal between Maillol and me. It was a mutual admiration. And it remained that way throughout the ten years of our work together.”
Prior to meeting Dina, Maillol had stopped sculpting, but his new model inspired him to start anew and, working with her he began a whole new series of monumental sculptures of the female form, most notably L’Harmomie, one of his best-known works, for which Dina can be seen modelling, below.
It was the simplicity and beauty of these figures that most struck me on visiting the Musée Maillol; there is an extraordinary candour and freshness to these statues, which speak of a world of innocence, almost beyond recall. All set in a soundscape of birdsong and gently rushing water, framed by vineyards and the peaks of Les Albères.
Histoire de ma vie
With a family background of dissident (Menshevik) activism, and with a Francophile father (later murdered in Auschwitz), Dina took part in socialist and antifascist movements from an early age. But during those first years in and around Banyuls (1936-39) she pursued an outdoor life, hiking with the Amis de la Nature, as a series of photographs taken by Pierre Jamet testify. Jamet, according to Dina’s own account in Histoire de ma vie, was her first lover: “il a été mon premier amoureux.” His photography, which can be found here, illustrates the outdoors life Dina and her companions enjoyed. One photograph, of a 17-year-old Dina caused a sensation when it first appeared in the press in 1937, and was used as a poster by the Popular Front (Front Populaire) political movement.
Dina was, as she proudly admits, “ahead of her time, wearing shorts and sandals when such garments were practically unheard of. She wore the same sandals, she tells us proudly, as the writer Colette, designed by Raymond Duncan, the brother of the dancer Isadora Duncan. She gives the impression of an exceptionally confident young woman, filled with vitality, which, however, is transposed into a kind of serenity in the sculptures that Maillol made of her.
And then came the war, and with it an influx of refugees from the cities — from within France and beyond —many of them Jewish and seeking help crossing the mountains into Spain. Dina was keen to help in guiding small groups of these desperate souls to safety, but she was not familiar with the secret tracks around Banyuls that led into Spain. However, Maillol was, and he showed her where they were.
Dina made contact with Varian Fry, of the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) operating out now Marseille (recently depicted in the Netflix series Transatlantic). She travelled to Marseille to arrange details with Fry, and while there she met some of the artists seeking assistance, including André Breton, Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst.
Those seeking to escape to Spain would turn up at Banyuls railway station, with instructions to go straight to the station café, where a young woman wearing a red dress would be waiting for them. This was Dina, who would then take them to a safe house, organised by Maillol, and prepare for their escape, at night. She led many refugees to freedom in this way. Maillol painted Dina in her red dress.
Dina under arrest
But this was dangerous work. Dina was twice arrested for her role in helping refugees escape to freedom. On the first occasion, she was held by local police loyal to the collaborationist Vichy regime. Dina was renting a room in a fisherman’s house in Banyuls at the time of her arrest. She was taken to Perpignan, and was convinced she would be sent to prison, or worse still, handed over to the Germans.
When Maillol received news of Dina’s arrest for leading ‘undesirables’ across the border to Spain, he hired a prominent local lawyer and friend, Pierre Camo, to represent her. Camo defended Dina at her trial in Céret and she was acquitted. To get her out of danger, Maillol then sent Dina to stay for a while with his friends Matisse and Bonnard, who also lived in the South of France but far from the Spanish border. She modelled for both these artists, and they also became her friends.
In her memoir, Dina says that during this time she missed her work helping refugees to cross the border into Spain. It was something she would have liked to continue doing, but it was no longer safe to do so.
Around ten years ago, a memorial appeared on the Banyuls-Espolla road, close to the little bridge that marks the beginning of the ascent to the Coll de Banyuls. The plaque there honours the memory of 50 local guides who helped people cross the mountains into Spain (including three with the surname Maillol). But I do wonder why Dina’s name is not included in the list, and one day I will ask, as it seems a serious omission.
Interrogated by the Gestapo
Dina’s second arrest, in Paris, in 1943, was far more serious. She was held at the infamous prison of Fresnes and interrogated by the Gestapo. The French police back in Perpignan had been humiliated by her earlier release and worked with the Gestapo to ensure she did not evade punishment a second time. When questioned about her long excursions in the Pyrenees, she remained steadfast, answering merely that she loved to go hiking in the mountains, and that she’d occasionally wander into Spain to buy groceries. She was held for six months and repeatedly interrogated. “I was beaten, but really beaten by the Gestapo”, she later told Alain Jaubert, in Histoire de ma vie. But she was also questioned by agents of the German counter-espionage service, and in quite a different manner. These men, she says, “were rather polite, cultured officers . . . I was twenty-four years old, and I was convinced that my life was over.” They had received reports from the police in Perpignan that Dina was ‘half-Jewish’, and questioned her about this. So she bluffed it: “Why only half?” she said. The officer laughed, turned the page, and moved onto the next thing . . .
Again Maillol came to the rescue. Long before the war, he had been on friendly terms with the German sculptor Arno Breker (1900-1991), who had studied in Paris, and spoke fluent French. But with the rise of the Third Reich, Breker made a significant change of direction in his art, thereby achieving fame (or notoriety) as ‘Hitler’s favourite sculptor’. His works became emblematic of the Thousand Year Reich, and he was appointed Director of a vast workshop where (in Dina’s words) “dozens of sculptors spent their time making eagles, statues, all sorts of hideous allegories for the palaces and monuments of the Reich.”
Somewhat inadvisedly, as it later turned out, Maillol had attended the opening of an exhibition of Breker’s work at the Musée de L’Orangerie in 1942 (as did Cocteau, Derain and Vlaminck). Breker evidently appreciated this token of support, and intervened in the arrest of Dina. It has never been established quite how he did this, nor what strings he pulled, but miraculously, Dina was released, and although she continued to detest his work as a sculptor, she was eternally grateful to Breker for securing her freedom.
In later years, following Maillol’s death, Dina worked tirelessly to promote the artist’s work, which had, to some degree, been ‘cancelled’. Most notably, she set up the Fondation Dina Vierny-Musée Maillol, and with the support of the government of President Mitterand, opened the Musée Maillol in Paris, officially inaugurated by Mitterand himself in 1995. In her book, Histoire de ma vie, she comes across as an immensely brave and passionate woman, committed to social justice and to securing the legacy of the man she regarded as her spiritual father.
Maillol’s death
Aristide Maillol died as the result of a car crash in September 1944 near Banyuls, shortly after the liberation of Paris. He was being driven by a doctor friend to the home of Raul Dufy in Perpignan.
It appeared to be a simple accident, with the artist’s car spinning out of control and overturning, and was accepted as such by his son, Lucian, and by Dina.
But questions remained unanswered. He might have been regarded as a local hero, for his role in helping people escape the Nazis. Instead, Maillol was under suspicion by the Resistance. Not because he had displayed support for the Nazi cause, but for a number of other reasons:
His first and most important patron was Count Harry Kessler, a German (though by no means a Nazi). In 1914, Kessler had sent a telegram to Maillol warning him to bury his work as German forces were advancing into France.
At the end of the First World War, Maillol was accused of complicity with the enemy, but was cleared, with the support of the Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau.
He had been friends with Arno Breker, along with other German artists.
He had been known to have had German visitors, including several soldiers, visit his studio in Banyuls.
Although, unlike others (such as Derain, Vlaminck and Van Dongen) he refused the trip to Germany organised for French artists by the Nazi occupiers in 1941, he had, as we have seen, attended the exhibition by Arno Breker at the Orangerie in 1942.
These were errors of judgement, of course, but they did not make him a collaborator. They simply pointed to his naivety. Besides, a collaborator would not have helped so many to escape the Nazis, as Maillol did, by assisting Dina and showing her the paths into Spain.
But tongues wagged, and no doubt there was animosity towards the old man. He was not invited to contribute to any of the celebratory exhibitions in Paris following Liberation in 1944.
Subsequently, rumours emerged that the car crash had not been an accident. More specifically, that Maillol had been subject to a frenzied hammer attack by a member of the Resistance. At 83, he was never likely to recover from this kind of a beating.
Writing in the Irish Times, Lara Marlowe expands on this theory:
In Germany and Austria — though never in France — I have heard this latter version repeated several times as accepted fact. The respected Austrian painter Georg Eisler, who sadly died a few years ago, confirmed it to me in conversation - and since Eisler was a Jew and a strong Leftist, who in 1944 was in exile in England, he was not at all likely to be duped by German propaganda. The sculptor Imogen Stuart has also told me that her teacher, the Bavarian artist Otto Hitzberger, spoke of it as something generally known and accepted. Hitzberger, too, was not a man to swallow propaganda rumours easily, since he had been persecuted under the Hitlerian regime, forbidden to show his work, and deprived of his teaching post in Berlin.
Perhaps we shall never know the truth. Those who loved Maillol would not have wanted his name dragged through the dirt yet again after his death, so may have gone along with the car accident story even if they suspected otherwise.
What remains certain is that, thanks largely to the support provided after his death by the extraordinary Dina Vierny, the work of this modest and unassuming sculptor lives on in the quiet setting of his home outside Banyuls, beside a placid stream and surrounded by rolling hills covered in cypress, beech and holm oak. On the day I visited last week, with my wife and friends visiting from Wales, we sat by the stream and enjoyed a picnic, accompanied by the song of an invisible nightingale, hiding out in one of the nearby trees.
(Extracts from History de ma vie by Dina Vierny are in my translation)
Richard Gwyn is a writer and translator from Wales. His books include The Color of a Dog Running Away, The Vagabond’s Breakfast, The Blue Tent and Ambassador of Nowhere. For many years he led the graduate programmes in Creative & Critical Writing at Cardiff University, Wales. Information about his books, as well as articles, interviews etc can be found at https://richardgwyn.com or by clicking here.