Down a leafy mews in Montparnasse where the windows and doorways are heavilyfringed with vines, you can still find a tantalising hint of old Paris. Villa Vassilieff is where the Russian-born painter Marie Vassilieff, who studied with Matisse, opened an art school and a canteen to feed the city’s cash-strapped artists – who at that time included Giacometti and Picasso.
These days, her former premises are fittingly occupied by a group of feminist art historians called Aware (Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions), whose aim is to rewrite female-identifying artists back into the story of art. One indication of how effective Aware’s first nine years have been is the historic new section they have curated for the art fair Frieze Masters, which opens this week in London. Modern Women features artists active between 1880 and 1980, a time span chosen to encompass the first and second waves of western feminism.
