A revolutionary female gaze

The Centre Pompidou owns the largest collection of works by the painter Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938). For the first time since 1967, a major exhibition is being dedicated to her in Paris, supplemented by loans from the Musée d'Orsay and the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others. The artist began her career as a model and learned by watching painters at work. As a self-taught artist, she quickly gained a reputation in Montmartre and became internationally renowned in the following years. Valadon is considered an important pioneer of early modernism and was the first woman to produce a large frontal nude painting of a man – a real shock, as women were still forbidden to do so according to the conventions of her time. Described as wild and free-spirited, the painter never allowed herself to be pigeonholed into an art movement and developed a very individual style. The Suzanne Valadon exhibition runs from January 15 to May 26 in Paris.

The nude, both male and female, was Valadon's main subject. She approached it without voyeurism or artificiality. Valadon showed nude models in unusual poses that did not idealize or sexualize their bodies. She later made a name for herself with unembellished self-portraits of her ageing body – which would still meet with a certain lack of understanding today. In addition to Valadon's paintings and drawings, visitors can expect to see previously unpublished archive material and selected paintings by contemporaries such as Juliette Roche, Georgette Agutte, Jacqueline Marval, Emilie Charmy and Hélène Delasalle, which contextualize Valadon's work.