Metz (France) (AFP) – She was celebrated as the "housekeeper who painted", before dying in a psychiatric hospital and, much later, inspiring cinema: at the Center Pompidou-Metz, the first international retrospective dedicated to Séraphine Louis (1864-1942) exhibits her giant canvases in flamboyant colors.

Published on: 02/11/2026 - 16:33 Modified on: 02/11/2026 - 16:43

On an entire floor of the Metz museum, around a hundred paintings, photographs and even extracts from the artist's letters retrace the career of this self-proclaimed painter "without rival", whose dazzling bouquets of flowers in XXL size (two meters high, 1.30 m wide) seem to come to life.

A seven-César film, "Séraphine" by Martin Provost (800,000 admissions in France), helped to popularize in 2008 the destiny of this somewhat enlightened servant who became a painter, sometimes known under the name of Séraphine de Senlis - a native of Oise, she settled in this city as an adult.

Orphaned at a very young age, a servant from the age of 13 - in private homes then in a convent - she became a housekeeper for the German art critic Wilhelm Uhde, considered the one who contributed to discovering her as an artist.

Stock market crash and asylum

For the press, Séraphine Louis becomes "the cleaning lady who paints", known more for her extraordinary story than for her art strictly speaking, raises Elia Biezunski, the curator of the exhibition.

The artist, who sold some of his paintings to Uhde, acquired a brief notoriety as a primitive painter. But the critic deprived her of support after 1929 and the stock market crash. A shift visible in the exhibition, where the giant canvases are transformed into paintings of much more modest size, but still showing a depth, even a feeling of overflowing the frame.

Shortly after, in 1932, Séraphine Louis was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, where she died 10 years later in an asylum near Senlis, weakened by hunger due to the war, and breast cancer.

During this decade in the asylum, the artist did not benefit from his success. However, several exhibitions of his work have been organized and his works circulate in Europe, but also in Asia or America - certain pieces from the Metz exhibition were loaned by the MoMA in New York.

In several exhibition catalogs, she was, during this period, wrongly presented as having died in 1934.

Inspiration

In Metz - where this retrospective is the result of "excellent work" of research, according to Chiara Parisi, director of the Pompidou center - the exhibition strives to explore "each of the facets" of the painter.

The idea is to “go beyond the classifications that kept her at a distance from the stories of artistic modernity”, to evoke her “determination” and her “tremendous creative impulse”, summarizes Elia Biezunski.

Séraphine Louis did not leave any writings relating her inspirations or her creative process, but the curator highlights her spiritual sources, after 20 years spent in a convent.

Due to lack of means, she paints with Ripolin, an inexpensive industrial lacquer but not intended for fine arts, most often on recycled materials. Even at the height of her career, she continued to use this brilliant paint, of which she loved the transparencies, drips or cracks, in an avant-garde approach.

Visible in Metz until April 12, the exhibition will then travel from June 9, 2027 to January 9, 2028 to the Musée Maillol in Paris, which opened its archives and loaned works to the Center Pompidou-Metz as part of this retrospective.

© 2026 AFP

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