Balthus
(French, 1908–2001)
Biography
Balthus was a French painter known for his dreamlike depictions of eroticized pubescent girls. One of his best-known paintings La Leçon de guitar (The Guitar Lesson) (1934), portrays a woman and young girl in the midst of a music lesson, with the woman’s breast exposed and the young girl’s skirt above her waist. “I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings,” he once said. Born Balthasar Klossowski on February 29, 1908 in Paris, France to an artistic family, exposed to the Parisian cultural and artistic elite at a young age. He and his brother Pierre Klossowski befriended many prominent figures of the 1920s, including Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, and Georges Bataille. During the period before and after World War II, Balthus moved from France, settling in Rome in 1964, where he befriended Federico Fellini. He later moved to Switzerland with his young Japanese wife the artist Setsuko Ideta in 1977. The artist died in Rossinière, Switzerland on February 18, 2001. Today, Balthus’s work can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, among others.
Balthus Artworks
Balthus
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