When she was almost a septuagenarian, Suzanne Valadon portrayed herself with her breasts exposed, a pearl necklace, and a defiant gaze. In this way – free of prejudices, flirty and provocative – she summed up her life and work. Accustomed to her presence in its galleries through the canvases of other artists (she was a muse of the fin-de-siècle Montmartre group), the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona gives her the floor until 1 September through a retrospective of her entire output, from the self-taught dabbles of a laundress’s lovechild and later young mother to the success of a portraitist of the grand monde. An absolutely liberated oeuvre which took on motley references over time but eventually settled under a code of its very own that was grounded on naturalness. This was especially strong in the painter’s treatment of the nude: the former model deviated from the poses that seduced men, to instead capture womanhood in its full reality and diversity – bold and proud like Valadon herself amid the monopoly of male artists.