MASP

At the age of 15, besides her work as a waitress in the bars of Montmartre, Suzanne Valadon became a model for artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). At 17, upon the birth of her son, painter Maurice Utrillo (1883–1955), of unknown paternity, she began to draw. Upon seeing her drawings, Renoir introduced her as an artist to the art world. She was the first woman to show her works at the Salon des Beaux-Arts de Paris, in 1894. On that occasion, painter Edgar Degas (1834–1917) bought some of her works and encouraged her to work with printmaking, opening the doors of his own studio to her. After an unproductive period of 15 years, which coincided with her first marriage, Valadon became active again in 1909. She kept the saturated colors of her pastel drawings, while borrowing themes from Degas such as bathers and reclining nudes. In 1924, she took part in exhibitions of women artists in Paris, placing her work back into the spotlight. In her work in the MASP collection, Nudes, one woman is reading, lying face down in the grass, while the other one sits above her, arranging her hair while her foot toys with a yellow shoe between the prone women’s legs. Their pink and yellow body tone, coupled with their outlines, thrusts the bathers into the foreground, above the swathes of green grass, vegetation, and the masonry of a low wall.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017

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The painting Female Nudes is comparable with another canvas of 1919, Black Venus (Venus Noire), conserved at the Musée Municipal, Menton, for its references characteristic of Degas.

— Unknown authorship, 1998

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