Remembering Vio: Director of Education and Spirit of the Barnes Foundation

Violette de Mazia--affectionately known as Vio--wanted the Barnes approach to looking at art to live on, to remain forever vibrant. That the method is still taught and very much alive is in no small part due to her lifetime devotion to Dr. Albert C. Barnes, the Barnes Foundation, and her formalizing of the method in her essays. A brilliant teacher, writer, and editor, she wrote tomes about art and music, and her persona as a teacher and partner in art with Dr. Barnes was well known, but she was modest and nearly silent about herself and her past. This book is a memorial to Violette, a remembrance. It evolved from interviews with her students, friends, and those who worked for her and with her. It took a year's search through the Violette de Mazia archives, and several months at the Barnes Foundation archives in Merion, as well as searches done at national archives in Britain, France, Belgium, and the Middle East to complete the story. Ultimately, it is a treasure trove of love letters from her Egyptian-born fiance that gives special poignancy to Violette's incredible life story, on that has remained a mystery until now.

Paperback, 134 pages.