Marevna was born Maria Vorobieff in Russia in 1892. She left Russia in 1910 to study painting in Italy and it was there that she met Maxim Gorky who gave her the name Marevna (daughter of the sea). In 1912 she moved to Paris where, as a protégée of the poet Ilya Ehrenburg, she became friends and worked with many artists most notably Diego Rivera, Zadkine and Modigliani