1865 -1938 · Montmartre and independent modernity

Powerful contours, uncompromising nudes and intimate portraits make Suzanne Valadon a free and decisive voice in modern painting.

Suzanne Valadon was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon in 1865 and died in 1938. Coming from a modest background, she grew up in Montmartre and worked in several professions before becoming a model for Puvis de Chavannes, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and other artists. By observing them work, she alone developed a drawing practice whose safety struck Edgar Degas; he encouraged her and taught her engraving in particular. Her self-portrait of 1883 opened a work built outside the academies. She began painting in oil in the 1890s and in particular taught her engraving. Her self-portrait from 1883 opened a work built outside the academies. She began painting in oil in the 1890s and in 1894 became the first woman admitted to exhibit at the Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts. Valadon began painting in oil in the 1890s and in 1894 became the first woman admitted to exhibit at the Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts. Valadon tackled portraiture, still life, and landscape and especially the nude with a frankness that breaks with usual idealization. In L'Été where Adam and Eve, she represents herself alongside André Utter and reverses the traditional relationship between painter and model. Family portraits transforms those around her - her mother, her son Maurice Utrillo and Utter - into a tense psychological composition. The Abandoned Doll captures the transition from childhood to adolescence without sentimental anecdote. Her firm drawing, her dense colors and her decorative surfaces construct present bodies, never passively offered to the eye. Recognized during her lifetime, Valadon retains a deep independence in the face of successive movements of modernity. There selection "Suzanne Valadon" notably compares Summer or Adam and Eve and Family Portraits. His reading favors atmosphere.

Valadon paints bodies as sovereign presences: the outline affirms their weight, the color their space and the look their freedom.