Balthus

Balthus [bäl′thəs]

(pseud. of Balthasar Klossowski de Rola) 1908-2001; Fr. painter

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orig. Balthazar Klossowski

born Feb. 29, 1908, Paris, Fr.

died Feb. 18, 2001, La Rossinière, Switz.

French painter.

Born in Paris to Polish parents, he was considered a child prodigy and was encouraged by family friends including Pierre Bonnard, André Derain, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Without formal training, he supported himself through commissions for stage sets and portraits. He had his first one-man show in 1934. In the midst of 20th-century avant-gardism, he explored the traditional categories of European painting: the landscape, the still life, the subject painting, and the portrait. He presented ordinary moments of contemporary life on a grand scale and utilized traditional, Old Master painting techniques. Balthus is best known for his controversial depictions of adolescent girls. His disturbing and erotic images and his carefully cultivated persona made him an international cult figure. From 1961 to 1977 he served as director of the French Academy in Rome.

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▪ 2002

Balthazar Klossowski 

      French artist (b. Feb. 29, 1908, Paris, France—d. Feb. 18, 2001, Rossinière, Switz.), was one of the greatest figurative painters of the 20th century. His works included street scenes, portraits of fellow artists, and provocative depictions of young girls, who were often shown with cats. Balthus was largely self-taught and had a strong sense of tradition, with Piero della Francesca and Nicolas Poussin among his important influences. He was the son of Polish artists and grew up in Paris, Berlin, and Switzerland. In 1921, when he was 16, he published Mitsou, a series of drawings depicting his cat, with a preface by Rainer Maria Rilke. In 1924 Balthus went to Paris to study, and early in his career he supported himself by painting portraits and working as a stage designer and illustrator. Balthus had his first one-man show in Paris in 1934, and he subsequently became well known in the U.S., with eight exhibitions at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York City from 1938 to 1977. From 1961 to 1977 he was director of the French Academy in Rome, and it was during this period that he began to paint the Japanese model Setsuko Ideta, who in 1967 became his second wife. Balthus had a number of retrospectives, including exhibitions at museums in Paris, New York City, London, and Venice. Although he was reclusive and shunned publicity about his personal life, he collaborated with Nicholas Fox Weber on a biography, Balthus (1999). Among his paintings were Guitar Lesson (1934), depicting a young girl spread over the knees of an older woman and described variously as an erotic portrait of lesbianism or as a pietà; The Mountain (1937), one of his best-known landscapes, combining realistic detail with a sense of fantasy; and Therese (1938), one of his many suggestive portraits featuring a young girl.

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▪ French painter

pseudonym of  Balthazar Klossowski,  also spelled  Balthasar Klossowsky 

born February 29, 1908, Paris, France

died February 18, 2001, La Rossinière, Switzerland

      reclusive French painter who, in the midst of 20th-century avant-gardism, explored the traditional categories of European painting: the landscape, the still life, the subject painting, and the portrait. He is best known for his controversial depictions of adolescent girls.

      Balthus was born of artistic Polish parents who were active in a Parisian intellectual milieu that included Pierre Bonnard (Bonnard, Pierre), André Gide (Gide, André), and André Derain (Derain, André). His father was a painter, art historian, and stage designer whose family had left Warsaw in 1830 and settled in East Prussia. His Jewish mother was also a painter and had moved with her family from Minsk to Breslau, East Prussia, in 1873. Balthus was taken to Berlin by his parents in 1914 at the beginning of World War I, but after his parents separated in 1917 his time was divided for years between war-torn Germany and Switzerland. Poet Rainer Maria Rilke (Rilke, Rainer Maria), a friend of Balthus's mother, encouraged the precocious youth to publish an early book of drawings about Mitsou, a lost cat, for which Rilke also contributed a preface.

      With the help of Gide, in 1924 Balthus returned to Paris, where he began to study painting (with financial aid raised in part by Rilke). Balthus soon began to support himself by accepting commissions for stage sets and portraits, but, after his first one-man show in Paris in 1934, he devoted most of his time to large-scale interiors and austere, muted landscapes. In works such as The Street (1933), he presented ordinary moments of contemporary life on a grand scale and utilized traditional, Old Master painting techniques. Although these works were formally somewhat conservative, they raised controversy for their subject matter: the scenes often have an erotic, disturbing atmosphere and are often peopled with pensive adolescent girls. The presence of these languid, dreamy girls has often given rise to charges of pedophilic overtones; however, the artist's depiction of these girls has also been interpreted as a truthful, evocative portrayal of the awkwardness of adolescence.

      Balthus was given a successful show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1956, and he served as director of the French Academy in Rome from 1961 to 1977 (earning André Malraux's praise as France's “second ambassador to Italy”). He was honoured with huge retrospectives at the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris in 1983 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in 1984. He spent the last two decades of the century as a virtual recluse in Switzerland, where he lived in a grand, 18th-century chalet with his second wife. He continued to paint into his 90s.

Additional Reading

The artist's life is examined in Nicholas Fox Weber, Balthus: A Biography (1999). His works are examined and cataloged in Virginie Monnier, Balthus: Catalogue Raisonné of the Complete Works, ed. by Jean Clair (1999). Important exhibition catalogs include James Thrall Soby, Balthus (1956); and Sabine Rewald, Balthus (1984).

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