Suzanne Valadon, from model to artist

The atmosphere of the Montmartre bohemian life at the beginning of the 20th century is installed in the museum's rooms through the painter, illustrator and engraver Suzanne Valadon. The exhibition Suzanne Valadon. Una epopeia moderna, curated by Eduard Vallès and Philip Dennis Cate, has been organised by the MNAC in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou-Metz and the Musée d'Art de Nantes. Until 1 September, you can immerse yourself in the world of the self-taught artist.

Suzanne Valadon, pseudonym of Marie-Clémentine (1865-1938), explored all artistic genres, but excelled in portraiture and still life, showing a special interest in female nudes and odalisques, which became the high point of her work. 

At the age of fifteen, Valadon arrived in Montmartre, just at the moment when the neighbourhood was emerging as the epicentre of artistic modernity. She trained there, seeing at close quarters how artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir, among others, worked, for whom she acted as a model. Valadon, however, made the transition from model to established artist, a case with few equivalents in the history of art.

The exhibition presents more than a hundred works, of which forty-eight are only exhibited in Barcelona, ranging from oil paintings on canvas and cardboard, drawings and engravings to sculptures in script and bronze, as well as documentary material. This collection will give you a retrospective and contextualised view of the career of an artist who played a key role in the Parisian avant-garde scene from 1910 to 1930.  

This view is complemented by works by contemporary French and Catalan artists with whom Valadon worked, such as Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Casas and Rusiñol, and gives an idea of the richness of the artistic environment of the period, at the same time as they explain the multiple interactions that took place in avant-garde scenes and, above all, the social conquest of the status of artist by a woman.

Take the opportunity to discover the work of Suzanne Valadon and immerse yourself in her creative world at the exhibition Suzanne Valadon. A modern epopee. The exhibition opens on 19 April, but you have time to see it until 1 September. The opening hours are from Tuesday to Saturday, from 10 am to 6 pm; Sundays and holidays, from 10 am to 3 pm. From May, from Tuesday to Saturday, the opening hours will be extended until 8 pm. The general admission ticket costs 6 € and, if you want to buy it, you can do so from the website of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.