Exhibited all over the world and revered as an authentic pioneer, still little-known in France: here’s Suzanne Valadon, a painter celebrated during her lifetime and too long overshadowed by art history.

Nothing predisposed Valadon to a life as an artist. Born to an unknown father, little Marie-Clémentine drew her first charcoal drawings on the sidewalks of Montmartre, in the smoldering ruins of the Commune. As a young girl, she called herself Maria and became a model for the great names of her time –Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir painted her, Erik Satie fell madly in love with her. But Maria was not destined to remain a muse: during her posing hours, she observed those who painted her and perfected her technique in her spare time. For her, painting is not just a matter of passion, it’s a question of survival when, in the Paris of the Belle Époque, women of her rank are dying on the job…

In this graphic novel, and through a documentary for Arte, Flore Mongin and Coline Naujalis retrace the extraordinary itinerary of an incredibly modern artist, whose life appears as a succession of romantic escapades, encounters and blows of fate. They reveal a Suzanne Valadon free of convention or fear of scandal, living solely by and for her art, determined that her feminine and even maternal condition should not hinder her vocation as an absolute creator.