Suzanne Valadon
Suzanne Valadon , actually Marie-Clémentine Valadon (* 23. September 1865 in Bessines-sur-Gartempe , Haute-Vienne , † 7. April 1938 in Paris ) was a French painter of modernity . She is the mother of the painter Maurice Utrillo .
life and work
Life
Marie-Clémentine Valadon was born in 1865 as the daughter of a laundress in Bessines-sur-Gartempe in France. In 1870 the mother moved with her to Paris, to Montmartre . Here she experienced the horrors of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 and the suppression of the Paris Commune . At the age of eleven she had to leave the convent school to begin an apprenticeship. Because of her dexterity, she adorned hats and bonnets with feathers, flowers and birds. She later earned her living in a factory for funerary wreaths, as a vegetable seller in the Parisian market halls in the Quartier des Halles and as a waitress.
At 15 she was familiar with Montmartre. She got to know painters who brought her to the Mollier Circus because she really wanted to be a trapeze artist. An accident during one of her daring jumps ended this career. She was now known as a model, first for Puvis de Chavannes , then for Renoir , Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and many other painters who later made a name for themselves.
It was assumed that she had affairs with most of them, although the older ones might have portrayed Suzanne's father figure who was missing in her youth.
The love affair with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a very special one for Suzanne Valadon. It was also he who gave her her stage name Suzanne, since in his opinion Marie was much too good a name, since he knew her so passionately and wildly. The relationship between the two ended when Suzanne threatened to commit suicide if Toulouse-Lautrec did not marry her. He didn't and the relationship fell apart.
- Portraits of the Valadon
Auguste Renoir: Portrait of Suzanne Valadon , 1885
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Portrait of Suzanne Valadon , 1886–87
Auguste Renoir: The Braid , Portrait of Suzanne Valadon, 1887
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: The Drinker , Portrait of Suzanne Valadon, around 1888
Suzanne Valadon, drawn by Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen
Suzanne, who was also called the "goblin of the butte" (French butte - hill, meaning the Montmartre hill), has never attended an art academy as an autodidact . She learned her new profession by carefully observing and studying painters at work. During the seven years as a model at Renoir, Renoir had surprised her while working on a self-portrait, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who happened to discover some drawings during their relationship, sent them with the best of them to his great idol, the painter Edgar Degas . The almost blind, shy painter and great artist took a liking to Suzanne's drawings. The two became very good friends; a friendship to which Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec long reacted with jealousy. Degas taught her the art of etching using the technique of white varnish.
The first etchings were published in 1895. It was also Degas who bought her first drawings and introduced her works to art collectors and dealers. Over time, Suzanne Valadon stopped drawing and turned to color. She painted self-portraits , pictures of flowers, motifs with mother and child and unconventional female nudes. In 1909 he painted Adam and Eve , which shows the two biblical figures naked in a new interpretation of the scene. In order to be able to exhibit the picture, she had to paint over Adam's hip with a tendril for reasons of decency at the time. In 1911 joy of life followed , in 1914 the casting of the nets .
Her son Maurice was born in Paris on December 26, 1883. It is not known who his father was. Whether, as suspected, it might have been Boissy, the insurance writer who appeared in the bars as a journalist and painter at the time, even her mother couldn't say for sure. In any case, the art critic Miguel Utrillo y Molins, a Spanish nobleman with whom she had a relationship at the time, recognized her fatherhood, but the son was reluctant to accept his name and therefore later signed all his pictures with “Utrillo V.”, whereby “ V. “stood for Valadon. When Maurice Utrillo was young, he was raised by Suzanne's mother. Suzanne cared little for him, and he became an alcoholic as a teenager. After rehab, his mother encouraged him to devote himself to painting as a therapy.
In 1893, Suzanne Valadon had a brief love affair with the composer Erik Satie . The same night they met, he made her a marriage proposal, which she refused. The two separated again a few months later. Suzanne loved him dearly, and until his death he meant a lot to her, as did Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
In 1894, Suzanne Valadon designed her first exhibition in the Salon de Nationale. In 1896 she married the wealthy banker Paul Mousis, who offered her a secure life - a life that bored her. She moved further and further away from Mousis, and when she met the 24-year-old painter André Utter in Paris in 1909 , who became her model and lover, she separated from Paul and took her son with her. When they split up, Suzanne was 42 years old. For a long time she refused to marry André Utter; she now harbored a grudge against marriage. It was only when her lover went to war that she made the decision to marry him the day before he left. With him and her son Maurice Utrillo, she led a life and work community in the Rue Cortot on Montmartre, beyond all civil conventions. Utter took care of her until her death, but his jealousy always troubled her.
A young painter named Gazi, who made his living mainly as a guitar player, was her last friend and lover, who almost idolized her.
While she was working on a painting, she suffered a stroke which, at the age of 73, died on April 7, 1938 while being transported to the hospital. All of Montmartre mourned one of its most famous people. Utter preceded the funeral procession, son Maurice was unable to attend due to a mental breakdown he suffered at the news of his mother's death. Suzanne Valadon found her final resting place in the Saint-Ouen cemetery ( Cimetière parisien de Saint-Ouen ) north of Montmartre.
The asteroid (6937) Valadon and a Venus crater are named after her.
plant
During her lifetime, Suzanne Valadon was one of the most important painters of her time and was known beyond the borders of France. She left a complete oeuvre with almost 500 paintings as well as around 300 drawings and prints. Her first solo exhibition took place in 1915 in Berthe Weill's Paris gallery . Some of her works can be seen today in the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris, in the Musée de Grenoble and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but also in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. In 1964, works by her were shown at the documenta III in Kassel in the famous hand drawings department ; in 2009, works by Suzanne Valadon and Maurice Utrillo were shown in the Pinacothèque de Paris .
literature
- Jeanne Champion: The Beloved - Art and Life of Suzanne Valadon . Knaus 1990, ISBN 3-442-09634-0
- Valeska Doll: Suzanne Valadon (1865–1938). Identity construction in the field of tension between artist myths and femininity stereotypes . Herbert Utz, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-8316-0036-8
- Ursula Sigismund: Suzanne Valadon, model and painter . Kranichsteiner Literaturverlag, Darmstadt 1997, ISBN 3-929265-06-0
- Elke Vesper: Terrible Maria. The life of Suzanne Valadon. Novel . Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1995, ISBN 3-404-12203-8 ; as paperback Fischer, Frankfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-17807-0
- Thérèse Diamand Rosinsky: Suzanne Valadon . Flammarion, Paris 2005 ISBN 2-08-068465-5 (French)
- Janine Warnod: Suzanne Valadon (illustrated book), Gondrom, Bindlach 1994, ISBN 3-8112-1145-5
Web links
- Literature by and about Suzanne Valadon in the catalog of the German National Library
- Materials by and about Suzanne Valadon in the documenta archive
- Suzanne Valadon on aspects of art
- Suzanne Valadon at the National Museum of Women in the Arts
- Suzanne Valadon. In: FemBio. Women's biography research (with references and citations).
- Valadon and Satie ( Memento from March 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- Valadon - Utrillo Pinacothèque de Paris , 2009
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Valadon, Suzanne |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Valadon, Marie-Clémentine (real name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 23, 1865 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bessines-sur-Gartempe , Haute-Vienne department |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 7, 1938 |
| Place of death | Paris |