The history of Dina Vierny and her gallery is deeply linked to that of the great French sculptor Aristide Maillol. Dina Vierny became his model in 1934, after meeting a mutual friend of her father and the artist. The young girl was fifteen at the time and posed for Maillol for ten years, until his death in 1944. During this period, Dina Vierny also posed for Henri Matisse, who would influence her future as a gallery owner, and Raoul Dufy.

At the start of the Second World War, Dina Vierny joined the Resistance. From the Maillol house in Banyuls-sur-Mer, where she lived, she organised a network to cross the Pyrenees from France to Spain. She was eventually arrested by the Gestapo and locked up. Maillol had her freed and sent her to work with his colleagues Matisse and Bonnard, but the "girl in the red dress" returned to the Resistance networks and was arrested in 1943 in Montparnasse during a roundup. She was locked up for a second time in Fresnes prison and only released after six months' imprisonment, thanks to Maillol, who died shortly afterwards in 1944. Dina was appointed executor of Maillol's will and given responsibility for the artist's work. In 1947, she opened her gallery at 36 rue Jacob in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, on the advice of Henri Matisse and the art dealer Jeanne Bucher. Matisse even managed to persuade the famous architect Auguste Perret to design the layout of the gallery, which was housed in a former bougnat. Dina Vierny inaugurated its new space with an exhibition dedicated to the Catalan master. This was followed by exhibitions devoted to artists such as Rodin, Matisse, Kandinsky and Picasso. Thanks to her friendship with Anne-Marie Uhde, sister of the famous dealer Wilhelm Uhde, and her close relationship with Jeanne Bucher, Vierny became interested in, collected and exhibited Modern Primitives, known as "naive painters", right from the start of her career as a gallery owner. In particular, she produced a catalogue raisonné of the painted work of André Bauchant. In the 1950s, the gallery owner replaced a Russian singer in a cabaret and met Serge Poliakoff, who played guitar. This event marked the beginning of their long collaboration. At the beginning of 1970, Dina Vierny travelled to the Soviet Union where she met Russian non-conformist artists, who at the time were not allowed to exhibit in their country. She decided to promote them and smuggled their paintings back to France, where they were exhibited in 1973 under the title Avant-garde russe - Moscou 73.