Suzanne Valadon at Céntre Pompidou

Céntre Pompidou is holding the first monograph of the paintings of Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) in Paris since 1967. She was at the centre of the the Parisian modernist movements, first as a model and then as an artist in her own right. She grew up in poverty with her mother, who was an unmarried laundress in Montmartre. It is said that she taught herself to draw at a young age but that her ambition was to be a circus performer. Whilst she fulfilled this ambition, her circus career only lasted a year due to a back injury after a fall from the trapeze.

In 1883, aged 18, Valadon gave birth to a son, Maurice Utrillo, who also became an artist. After modelling for ten years from 1880 for artists such as Berthe Morisot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, she befriended Edgar Degas who encouraged her drawing and painting. With his support she was admitted to professional associations and was able to exhibit at the Salon d’Automne, the Salon des Independants and in the Salon des Femmes Artistes Modernes. In 1895 she married a wealthy banker, Paul Mousis, and was able to become a full-time painter. In 1909, she began an affair with the artist André Utter, who she married in 1914 after divorcing Mousis the previous year. Valadon and Utter regularly exhibited work together until they divorced in 1934.

Suzanne Valadon died of a stroke on 7 April 1938, at the age of 72. Among those in attendance at the funeral were her friends and colleagues Pablo Picasso, André Derain and Georges Braque.