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The new monographic exhibition at the Centre Pompidou highlights an excep- tional and emblematic artist, a model under the name of Maria, a painter under the name of Suzanne Valadon (1865 -1938).
Two hundred works present her work, often unknown, but so modern and free from the conventions of the time.
She does not adhere to any artistic movement, on the fringes of cubism and abstract art, Valadon plays a pioneering role in the world of painting.
Her beginnings as a favorite model of all Montmartre since the age of 14 gave her the opportunity to frequent musette balls, cabarets, cafés, alongside great artists of the time, Jean Jacques Henner, Auguste Renoir, Toulouse Lautrec... She learned to draw by observing them while she posed.
Degas opened the doors of his studio to her, without ever dedicating a single portrait to her.
The exhibition circuit follows five themes, thus, it begins with «Learning by obser- vation» then «Family portraits», «I paint people to learn to know them», «The true theory is imposed by nature», and ends with «Nude, a feminine gaze of the nude». A painter of reality, Valadon places the nude, feminine and masculine, at the center of her works, without voyeurism or artifice. In her famous painting «Adam and Eve» 1909, she is the first woman to paint a male nude from the front. Created for the Salon des Indépendants in 1920, she appears as Eve and her lover André Utter as Adam in a frontal position, the genitals of both presented in a bold way and for him, with vine leaves imposed for the Exhibition.
Suzanne VALADON
The Little Girl with the Mirror, 1909
Oil on canvas, 104.3 × 74.5 cm
Collection of Emelia Wilson, MA History of Art, Courtauld Institute of Art
Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images