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Maria Lani (Maria Jeleniewicz; 24 June 1895 – 1954) was an aspiring film actress and artists' model. In the late 1920s she was portrayed in paintings and sculpture by over 50 artists, including Bonnard,
Maria Lani (Maria Jeleniewicz; 24 June 1895 – 1954) was an aspiring film actress and artists' model. In the late 1920s she was portrayed in paintings and sculpture by over 50 artists, including Bonnard, Chagall
Marc Chagall (born Moishe Shagal; – 28 March 1985) was a Russian and French artist. An early modernism, modernist, he was associated with the School of Paris, École de Paris, as well as several major art movement, artistic styles and created ...
, Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau ( , ; ; 5 July 1889 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, film director, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost avant-garde artists of the 20th-c ...
, Derain, Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual arts, visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, ...
, Rouault, and Suzanne Valadon
Suzanne Valadon (; 23 September 1865 – 7 April 1938) was a French painter who was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the . She was also the ...
.
Biography
Maria Lani was born inKolno
Kolno is a town in northeastern Poland, located in the Podlaskie Voivodeship, about northeast of Warsaw. It is the seat of Kolno County, and the seat of the smaller administrative district (gmina) called Gmina Kolno, Podlaskie Voivodeship, Gmin ...
, Poland, and grew up in Częstochowa
Częstochowa ( , ) is a city in southern Poland on the Warta with 214,342 inhabitants, making it the thirteenth-largest city in Poland. It is situated in the Silesian Voivodeship. However, Częstochowa is historically part of Lesser Poland, not Si ...
and in Poland.
She went to Paris in the spring of 1928 and proclaimed herself to be a silent film
A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, w ...
star who had worked in Berlin. Together with her husband, Maximilian Abramowicz, and her brother, Alexander, the trio claimed to be working on a film which required multiple portraits as part of the plot. She befriended Jean Cocteau, who enthusiastically endorsed the project and with his encouragement, 59 artists made portraits of her.
A limited edition book about Lani and the portraits was published in 1929 by Éditions des Quatre Chemins, Paris with essays by Cocteau, Mac Ramo, and Waldemar George. It included 51 plates of reproductions.
The film never materialized, but the portraits were exhibited as a group in Europe and the United States, and Lani and Abramowicz kept them in their possession.
In 1941 they moved to New York City, where she worked at the Stage Door Canteen
The Stage Door Canteen was an entertainment venue for American and Allied servicemen that operated in the Broadway theatre district of New York City throughout World War II. Founded by the American Theatre Wing (ATW) in 1942, the entertainers w ...
, a recreational center for servicemen.
They returned to Paris after the war, where she died in 1954 and was buried in a pauper's grave
A potter's field, paupers' grave or common grave is a place for the burial of unknown, unclaimed or indigent people. "Potter's field" is of Biblical origin, referring to Akeldama (meaning ''field of blood'' in Aramaic), stated to have been pur ...
.
Notes
*In the late 1930s,Thomas Mann
Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...
coauthored a screen play that was inspired by Lani. "Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. His '' La Grande Illusion'' (1937) and '' The Rules of the Game'' (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greate ...
agreed to direct, with Garbo to star."
*The 3 December 1945 issue of ''Life
Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, Structure#Biological, organisation, met ...
'' magazine reproduced 15 of the portraits.
*Lani was an inspiration for fashion designer John Galliano
John Charles Galliano (born 28 November 1960) is a British fashion designer. He was the creative director of his eponymous label John Galliano and French fashion houses Givenchy and Dior. From 2014 to 2024, Galliano was the creative director ...
's spring/summer collection in 2011, and he referenced the portraits in the outfits of the models.
References
*External links
* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lani, Maria 1895 births 1954 deaths People from Kolno French artists' models