Suzanne Valadon

In the 1880s and ’90s, when Suzanne Valadon was in her twenties and working odd jobs around Paris, she began sitting for Renoir and taking drawing and etching classes with Degas. Soon after, she began painting, making it her full-time occupation in 1909 at the age of 44. But despite being associated with these leading Impressionists, her work has no real attachment to any one school; it could perhaps be said to sit somewhere in the fissures between Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and various strands of modernism. Valadon painted and drew female figures, frequently fleshy nudes, as well as the interiors, cafés and cabarets of fin de siècle Paris, and was obsessed by patterned surfaces, which recur in her work in everything from floral tiles, bedspreads and armchairs to panther-fur throws (over which a naked woman is draped languidly in a striking painting from 1923). This exhibition of some 200 works, the first Valadon monograph since an exhibition held at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in 1967, had its first iteration at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in 2023, travelled to Nantes and Barcelona, and now opens at the Pompidou in Paris (15 January–26 May).

Find out more from the Centre Pompidou’s website.
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Family Portrait (1912), Suzanne Valadon. Photo: © GrandPalaisRmn (Musée d’Orsay)/Christian Jean/Jean Popovitch

Catherine Naked Lying on a Panther Fur (1923), Suzanne Valadon. Lucien Arkas Collection. Photo: © Hadiye Cangokce

Violin Case (1923), Suzanne Valadon. Photo: CCØ Paris Musées/Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

The Blue Bedroom (1923), Suzanne Valadon. Photo: Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Jacqueline Hyde/Dist. GrandPalaisRmn