Suzanne Valadon | Exhibition's catalogue

Description

Suzanne Valadon left a fascinating body of work, both transgressive and radical. With a rebellious spirit, her destiny and her extraordinary life, her career draws the portrait of a modern artist and sheds light on an era on the edge of two worlds, taking us through the 19th and 20th centuries.

Part of a traditional genre, her portraits, still lifes and landscapes shake up conventions. Suzanne Valadon paints as she sees, without complacency or sexual inhibition. She stands out from the production of her time by her personal vision of the representation of childhood and adolescence, but also of nudity. Far from lasciviously extended female figures, she chooses to represent silhouettes that are larger than life, and even, at the height of her career, to take a raw look at her own body.

This book is the expanded edition of the catalogue published by the Centre Pompidou Metz, now out of print. Enriched with 16 pages, it includes two additional essays and the body of work is also larger and adapted to the Parisian exhibition. The two texts by curators Xavier Rey, director of the Musée national d'art moderne, and Nathalie Ernoult, curatorial attaché, come from the conference "Le clan Valadon" on the question of Suzanne Valadon as a woman artist, which took place in Metz in 2023.