Ivanna Lemaître (1893-1973)

Ivanna Lemaître was born in Saint Petersburg in 1893 and died in Nice in 1973. She is a young Russian aristocrat who went into exile in Paris during the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. She works and studies in a workshop in Montmartre, rue of the Grande Chaumière. Alongside her husband André Hubert Lemaître, fresco painter, she carried out Parisian commissions: the frescoes of the church of Meudon in 1927, the frescoes in the living room of Maréchal Lyautey at the colonial exhibition of 1931, Palais de la Porte Dorée. During the occupation, Ivanna Lemaître leaves for the French Riviera and settles there and separates from her husband. During her Parisian years, she produced portraits of illustrious friends such as Jean Cocteau, André Gide, François Mauriac and Serge Lifar. She also orders decorative panels in mosaics for the facades of public buildings, churches, etc. She paints and draws many works with various themes. She is buried in the Russian cemetery in Nice.