Balthus

Balthus ( Balthazar Klossowski de Rola) (1908–2001). French painter and stage designer, born in Paris of aristocratic Polish parents, both of whom painted. He had no formal artistic training, but taught himself mainly by copying Renaissance paintings in the Louvre and in Italy (the monumental dignity of Piero della Francesca particularly impressed him and left its mark on the solidity and formal balance of his work). He was also encouraged by Bonnard, Derain (of whom Balthus painted a memorable portrait, MOMA, New York, 1936), and the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, all family friends. The first painting in which he showed a strong personal vision was The Street (MOMA, New York, 1933), a carefully structured urban view with figures, two of which—a man caressing a girl—looked forward to the erotic imagery that was soon to dominate his work. His favourite theme has been the adolescent girl awakening to sexual consciousness; characteristically these girls are shown languidly sprawled or kneeling awkwardly over books in claustrophobic interiors that have a suggestion of Surrealist oddness (The Living Room, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1941–3). The Street was one of the works shown at his first one-man exhibition, at the Galerie Pierre, Paris, in 1934, which caused a scandal because of the sexual content of the pictures (one of them was placed in a back room and shown only to selected visitors). None of the works sold, but Balthus made a living with portraits and stage designs.

At the beginning of the Second World War Balthus joined the French army, but he was soon discharged on medical grounds and spent the years 1943–6 in Switzerland. He then returned to Paris and built up a reputation with one-man shows in Paris (Wildenstein Galerie, 1946), New York (Pierre Matisse Gallery, 1949), London (Lefevre Gallery, 1952), and elsewhere. In 1954 he moved to the Château de Chassy near Autun, and from 1961 to 1977 he was Director of the French Academy in Rome. Subsequently he lived mainly in seclusion in Switzerland. His output was small (he worked slowly) and he shunned publicity, but his highly distinctive, poignantly erotic images made him internationally famous, indeed something of a cult figure. His work has generally been warmly received by critics as well as the public (although some have accused him of having a Lolita complex) and he is widely regarded as one of the 20th century's leading upholders of the great tradition of figure painting. George Heard Hamilton, for example, writes that ‘No other painter has so shockingly depicted the stresses of adolescence, just as few others have had the courage to adapt traditional realism to contemporary purposes on such a monumental scale'.