Suzanne Valadon

 

Centre Pompidou 

January 15th – May 26th 2025 

Also see https://arthistorynewsreport.blogspot.com/2021/10/suzanne-valadon-model-painter-rebel.html

Curators

Nathalie Ernoult, assistant curator
Chiara Parisi, director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz

and Xavier Rey, director of Musée national d’art moderne

The Centre Pompidou is devoting a monograph to Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938), a bold and iconic artist, and one of the most important of her generation. She was on the fringes of the dominant trends of her time - cubism and abstract art were in their infancy, while she ardently defended the need to paint reality - placing the nude, both female and male, at the centre of her work and depicting bodies without artifice or voyeurism.

Suzanne Valadon had not been the subject of a monograph since the one devoted to her by the Musée National d’Art Moderne in 1967. Presented at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in 2023 (“Suzanne Valadon. A World of Her Own”), then at the Musée des Beaux-arts de Nantes (2024) and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (2024), the tribute to this ostensibly modern artist, free of the conventions of her time, continues at the Centre Pompidou in 2025, enhanced by new loans and new archives.

“I have drawn like crazy so that when I no longer have eyes, I will have them at the end of my fingers” Suzanne Valadon

The exhibition showcases this exceptional figure and highlights her pioneering, but often underestimated, role in the birth of artistic modernity. It reveals the great freedom of this artist, who did not really adhere to any particular movement, except perhaps her own. The exhibition of almost 200 works draws on a wealth of national collections, in particular the largest, that of the Centre Pompidou, but also from the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie.

Exceptional loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Fondation de l’Hermitage and major private collections complete the exhibition. It focuses on the artist’s two favourite media, drawing and painting, with particular emphasis on her graphic work, which is explored in depth through the presentation of a large number of drawings that have rarely been shown before.

It also provides an opportunity to explore an artistic moment at the heart of the transition between the collections of the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée National d’Art Moderne.

The “Valadon” exhibition retraces this unique journey, from the artist’s beginnings as the favourite model of all-Montmartre to her early artistic recognition by her peers and critics. Suzanne Valadon truly bridged one century to the next, embracing the Parisian fervour of the turn of the century, its cafés, bal-musettes and cabarets, and its many artistic, intellectual and societal revolutions. This unprecedented insight into her work reveals both her friendships and artistic connections with Bohemian painters, and her undeniable influence on the Parisian art scene thanks to the active support of her artist and gallery-owning friends.

This exhibition highlights the breadth, richness and complexity of her oeuvre, focusing on five thematic sections: Learning through observation, Family portraits, “I paint people to get to know them”, “The real theory is imposed by nature”, The nude: a feminine view. A selection of previously unpublished archives and works by her contemporaries with similar pictorial concerns, such as Juliette Roche, Georgette Agutte, Jacqueline Marval, Emilie Charmy and Hélène Delasalle, complement the exhibition.

The exceptional archive collection bequeathed to Centre Pompidou in 1974 by Dr Robert Le Masle, a doctor, art collector and close friend of the artist, containing many photographs, manuscripts and documents now housed in the Bibliothèque Kandinsky, provides a vital record of Valadon’s rebellious personality and early artistic recognition.

Following on from exhibitions of works by Alice Neel, Georgia O’Keefe, Dora Maar and Germaine Richier, this monograph is part of Centre Pompidou’s ongoing efforts to deepen our understanding of the work of women artists, and to increase the number of their works in the collection.

 Born Marie-Clémentine Valadon in Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, on 23 September 1865, Suzanne Valadon moved to the Montmartre district of Paris around 1866 with her mother, who worked as a cleaner and later as a laundress. In 1870 Marie-Clémentine Valadon was sent to Nantes to live with her half-sister, where she experienced the insurrectionary events of the Paris Commune from afar. In 1873 she produced her first drawings. 

Back in Paris in 1876, she took on various apprenticeships: in a dressmaker’s workshop, at a florist’s shop and at the market to provide for the household that she once again formed with her mother on the Rue Cortot. Going by the name of Maria, then Suzanne, she became a model for Puvis de Chavannes, then Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Henner, Wertheimer and Hynais. In 1882 she met Miquel Utrillo. A year later, she gave birth to Maurice and produced her first painting. In 1893 she met Erik Satie, who shared her life for a few months, then Edgar Degas, who bought her works and taught her printmaking. 

In 1909 she exhibited at the Salon d’Automne with Summer (Été), also known as Adam et Eve (Adam et Ève), the first work in the history of modern art by a woman and one depicting a frontal male nude. 

She devoted herself entirely to her art until her death in 1938, leaving 480 paintings, 275 drawings and 31 engravings. Almost sixty years since the last retrospective dedicated to Valadon at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1967, the new exhibition initiated by the Centre Pompidou-Metz, 

Suzanne Valadon: A World of Her Own, celebrated the unique artist in the Parisian landscape at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her independence from the avant-garde and her place at the heart of the “infernal trio” she formed with Maurice Utrillo and André Utter have long overshadowed an in-depth analysis of her work, of which the present retrospective offers a renewed reading in the light of the reflections now driving our society. Valadon lived on the cusp of two centuries, in an era marked by multiple revolutions: industrial, societal, political, intellectual and artistic. 

Her life holds the clues to an era that saw the blossoming of pictorial modernity and its new artistic paths: in turn the realism of Gustave Courbet, the voluptuous nudes of Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres and the naturalistic landscapes of the Barbizon School, followed by the anti-academicism of Édouard Manet, the impressionist metamorphosis and aesthetic experimentation of Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne, and the symbolism of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. She lived in a Paris reshaped by Napoleon’s ambitions and the pauperisation of neighbourhoods by Georges Eugène Haussmann public works. She witnessed the emergence of cultural industries and the beginnings of a revived art market. 

She joined the bohemian scene and fully embraced the new life in the French capital at cafés, bals musettes and cabarets. Valadon was a resolutely modern woman who lived life to the full in an era of great ideological shifts. Her protean art took the form of drawing, printmaking and painting. “I have drawn madly so that when I no longer have eyes, I have some at my fingertips,” declared the artist in her manifesto Suzanne Valadon ou L’Absolu. 

 Portrait of Germaine Eisenmann ( Portrait de Germaine Eisenmann ), 1924 Oil on canvas, 81 × 65 cm Private collection 

Madame Robert Rey and Her Daughter Sylvie( Madame Robert Rey et sa fille Sylvie ), c. 1920 Oil on canvas, 92 × 60 cm Izmir, Arkas Sanat Merkezi, 841 

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Les Dames Rivière, 1924 Oil on canvas, 100 × 74 cm Paris, private collection, PGS 

Portrait of Mauricia Coquiot ( Portrait de Mauricia Coquiot ), 1915 Oil on canvas, 93 × 73 cm Donation Charles Wakefield-Mori, 1939 Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, on loan to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Menton, AM 3800 P 

Portrait of Bernard Lemaire’s Mother (Portrait de la mère de Bernard Lemaire), 1894 Oil on canvas, 52 × 40 cm Val-d’Oise, collection de la Ville de Sannois, on loan to the Musée de Montmartre, MSVT 2005.1.1

The Utter Family (La Famille Utter), 1921 Oil on canvas, 95 × 135 cm Robert Le Masle bequest, 1974 Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, AM 1974-124

Portrait of Louis Moysès, Founder of Le Boeuf sur le Toit (Portrait de Louis Moysès, fondateur du Bœuf sur le Toit), c. 1924 Oil on canvas, 65,3 × 54 cm Weisman-Michel collection, on loan to the Musée de Montmartre 

The Artist’s Mother (La Mère de l’artiste), 1912 - Oil on canvas, recto, 82 × 62 cm Gift of Dr Albert Charpentier, 1935 Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, AM 2046 P (R) 

Portrait of Geneviève Camax-Zoegger (Portrait de Geneviève Camax-Zoegger), 1936 Oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm Florence, Bellini collection 

Germaine Utter in Front of Her Window (Germaine Utter devant sa fenêtre), 1926 Oil on canvas, 73 × 54 cm Private collection 

Portrait of Charles Wakefield-Mori (Portrait de Charles Wakefield-Mori), 1922 Oil on canvas, 68,5 × 57,5 cm Deed of gift by Charles Wakefield-Mori, 1939, Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, on loan to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Menton, AM 3769 P 

Portrait of Nora Kars ( Portrait de Nora Kars), 1922 Oil on canvas, 73,5 × 54 cm Madame Georges Kars bequest, 1966 Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, AM 4354 P

Portrait of Miss Lily Walton ( Portrait de Miss Lily Walton ), 1922 Oil on canvas, 100 × 81 cm State purchase, 1938 Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, on loan to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Limoges, AM 2204 P 

Portrait of a Woman ( Portrait d’une femme ), 1934 - Oil on canvas, 41 × 33cm Weisman-Michel collection, on loan to the Musée de Montmartre 1

Portrait de Madame Maurice Utrillo ( Portrait de Madame Maurice Utrillo (Lucie Valore) ), 1937 Oil on canvas, 55,9 × 46 cm Paris, private collection 

Girl Crocheting (Jeune Fille faisant du crochet), vers 1892 - Oil on canvas, 46 × 38cm Robert Le Masle bequest, 1974 Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, AM 1974-120 

Portrait of Madame Pétridès ( Portrait de Madame Pétridès), 1937 Oil on canvas, 55 × 46,5 cm Paris, private collection 

Woman in an Armchair ( Femme dans un fauteuil (Portrait de Madame G.)), 1919 Oil on canvas, 73 × 60 cm Weisman-Michel collection, on loan to the Musée de Montmartre 

André Utter and His Dogs ( André Utter et ses chiens), 1932 Oil on canvas, 163,5 × 131 cm Villefranche-sur-Saône, musée municipal Paul-Dini, 1999.1.395

Suzanne Valadon’s painting was marked from the start by portraits of her relatives and genre scenes. Her work was favourably received at the official salons, which were freeing themselves from the dogma of the hierarchy of subjects. From 1903, she relentlessly pursued her research into the expressiveness of her figures, mainly her friends and relatives. She depicted them in interiors, gradually abandoning the sober settings of her earlier works. Pursuing the goals of the Pont-Aven school, she attempted in this painting to capture fully a state of mind. This group of works, presented here in the style of a gallery of Italian Renaissance portraits, provides clues about Valadon’s entourage: her niece and greatniece, Marie Coca and Gilberte; the collectors Mauricia Coquiot, Charles WakefieldMori and Madame Pétridès; and her husband André Utter’s family. In the canvas Marie Coca and her daughter Gilberte (Marie Coca et sa fille Gilberte), Valadon indulged in the “painting-within-a-painting” tradition, quoting Edgar Degas’ Ballet Rehearsal at the Opera (Une répétition d’un ballet à l’opéra) at the top left of the composition. Its inverted presentation in relation to the painting suggests that it is an engraving Degas produced between 1890 and 1917, displayed on the opposite wall. 

From the very first drawings she made in charcoal, pastel and graphite around 1883, the self-portrait has played a central role in Valadon’s work. Throughout her life, her self-portraits expressed her personality; she depicted herself without compromise.“You have to be hard on yourself, have a conscience, look yourself in the face” she said. Drawing An intuitive practice that she took up from an early age, drawing was an important stage in Suzanne Valadon’s artistic development. Her subjects, domestic scenes or nudes of youth triumphant, place her in the legacy of Ingres and Degas. 

It was not until 1909 that Suzanne Valadon fully embraced painting. Dominated by nudes, landscapes, still lifes with fauvist overtones and lavishly decorated interiors, Suzanne Valadon’s paintings were as much an extension of the precepts of the École de Paris as they were a prelude to expressionism. Landscapes and large outdoor nudes Suzanne Valadon met Puvis de Chavannes in the early 1880s. For seven years, he had her work as a model, sometimes a nymph, sometimes an ephebe. Through him, she also trained her eye, talked about art for hours on end and developed her line. Her later work bears witness to this influence, which she assimilated and reinterpreted, just like the symbolist lesson. 

From 1896, Suzanne Valadon was taught printmaking by Edgar Degas in his studio. A transitional stage between ink and brush in her work, in which she deployed all the characteristic vigour of her sharp, precise line.

Suzanne Valadon, The Joy of Life (La Joie de vivre),1911

 

Suzanne Valadon, Nude Dedicated to Berthe Weill (Nu dédicacé à Berthe Weill),

Suzanne Valadon, The Lady with the Little Dog (La Dame au petit chien), 1917

The Lady with the Little Dog (La Dame au petit chien) portrays an androgynous, lonely and sensual person, whom the low angle makes imposing, almost sculptural. Her nudity is both hidden and suggested by a large, richly coloured cloth, which Suzanne Valadon was particularly fond of using in her compositions. The model may have been her husband, André Utter. This painting, rarely shown, reveals a certain strangeness in its facture and in the choice of subject.

 

Suzanne Valadon, Catherine in the Tub (Catherine au tub),1895

Printmaking is an exception in Suzanne Valadon’s career. She produced about thirty prints until around 1915. In this medium, traditionally favoured by men, she quickly found her audience. Catherine in the Tub (Catherine au tub), her first known etching, shows her mastery of soft varnish, a technique that gives a soft effect to the whole.

Suzanne Valadon, Still Life with Flowers and Pineapple (Nature morte aux fleurs et à l’ananas), 1924

Peer recognition It was through her drawings that Suzanne Valadon revealed herself. While she soon established herself as a key artist in the fashionable salons of the period, she also quickly found support from important art dealers. From 1893 she exhibited at the renowned Barc de Bouteville and was regularly shown at the Galerie Berthe Weill, which, along with the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, was one of her most loyal allies. Decorative interior Suzanne Valadon painted her first still life in 1900. Along with nudes, portraits and landscapes, the genre was one of her favourite subjects. In this painting she demonstrates her closeness to the issues of her contemporaries and the influence of Paul Cézanne’s painting on her work.