Balthus

"BALTHUS", BALTHASAR KLOSSOWSKI DE ROLA (Paris, 1908-Switzerland, 2001).
"Deux enfants, jardin du Luxembourg," Paris, ca. 1925.
Charcoal on paper.
Provenance: Acquired around 1964 from the son of Balthus. Piece bought in Art Curial in 2005.
Measurements: 17,6 x 22 cm; 31 x 34,5 cm (frame).
The style of Balthus starts from a classical and academic base; however, his technique and his style of composition are inspired by the pre-renaissance painters, with many stylistic references similar to the aesthetics of Giorgio de Chirico. Excelling in figurative painting, he excelled in the representation of the human figure at a time when figurative art had lost prominence to abstraction.
During his formative years, his artistic talent was supported by Rainer Maria Rilke, Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse. His father, Erich Klossowski, a prominent art historian, and his mother, Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro, were part of the Parisian cultural elite. In 1914, the German-born Klossowski family underwent a major life change when, with the outbreak of war, they were forced to leave Paris and move to Berlin. After the separation of Klossowski's spouses, in 1917 they settled in Switzerland. During this period Balthus, began to approach the artistic world through a series of ink drawings in which he illustrates a story that portrays his cat Mitsou. Towards the end of 1922, Balthus returned to Berlin with the hope of enrolling in the School of Fine Arts. Instead, due to his family's financial instability, he spent the winter in the studio of the painter Eugen Spiro . In 1924, Balthus returned to Paris, where he began taking drawing lessons with models that Pierre Bonnard had at the Académie Libre on rue de la Grande Chaumière.
From 1930 to 1932 he lived in Morocco where he did military service in the infantry department of Kenitra and in Fez. He worked as a secretary and wrote the painting La Caserma (1933). Then he returned to Switzerland in 1932 and met some surrealists: Breton, Eluard, Giacometti. The knowledge of this new movement born in Paris in the immediate post-war period developed through the posters conceived by André Breton between 1925 and 1930. Some aspects of the surrealist consciousness coincided with the development of Balthus' research. Whose work reflected the suspension of time and dreaming. In 1933 he moved into his first Parisian studio on Rue de Furstemberg, where the twenty-five-year-old painter received visits from intellectuals and artists, curious to see the work of this young man praised by figures such as Andrè Derain, who at the time helped and advised Balthus. André Breton and Paul Éluard also visited the studio as a surrealist delegation and were disappointed to discover Balthus' paintings which they considered banal for realism. Also in the surrealist group was the sculptor Alberto Giacometti, who in the following years became one of Balthus' privileged interlocutors.
In 1937 he married Antoinette de Watteville, during those years, Balthus achieved a remarkable success that earned him a series of recognitions in the artistic field. His work aroused the admiration of painters and writers, especially André Breton and Pablo Picasso. In 1940, due to the invasion of France by the German army, Balthus was forced to join the troops on the German shepherd front. In 1942 he fled France where he finally returned in 1946. In 1964 he moved to Rome where he worked at Villa Medici as director of the French Academy in Rome, appointed by the French Minister of Culture, André Malraux. Today his work is collected in important private collections and public centers among which the Louvre Museum stands out.