From mid-April 2023, the Centre Pompidou-Metz will also be hosting a major exhibition that must be ranked among the highlights of the international art year 2023.
Almost fifty years after her last retrospective in France, the show "Suzanne Valadon. Un monde à soi" offers a profound exploration of the expressive - and decidedly contemporary - nature of the work of the fascinating French painter (1865-1938). Valadon's portraits, still lifes and landscapes irresistibly defy convention: She boldly and courageously paints as she sees - without any embellishment, without any sexual inhibitions. And yes, one can rightly assume that this also manifests her desire to escape the dominant "male gaze". Suzanne Valadon's very personal view of the depiction of childhood, youth and - in particular - nudity set her apart from the images that characterized her time. Instead of lasciviously draped women, Valadon painted silhouettes that corresponded to naked reality, even going so far as to expose her own body to this critical gaze at the height of her career.
With over two hundred works (such as those from Edgar Degas' personal collection with loans from the Musée du Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Musée de l'Orangerie and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York), the exhibition curated by Chiara Parisi, Director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz, illustrates the extraordinary breadth and diversity of Suzanne Valadon's oeuvre. Archival material and important works that inspired Valadon or of which she herself is the subject also illustrate the historical and artistic context surrounding the painter from the end of the 19th century to the looming Second World War.
April 15 to September 11, 2023
Suzanne Valadon, Vénus noire, 1919, Menton, musée des Beaux-Arts, en dépôt au Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'Art moderne © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Philippe Migeat
