Balthus

Balthus
Balthus by Damian Pettigrew (1996)
Born	Balthasar Klossowski (1908-02-29)February 29, 1908 Paris, France
Died	February 18, 2001(2001-02-18) (aged 92) Rossinière, Switzerland
Nationality	French
Known for	Painting, drawing, watercolor
Notable work	The Street (1933–35) The Mountain (1937) Nude Before a Mirror (1955)
Awards	Praemium Imperiale

Balthasar Klossowski de Rola (February 29, 1908 – February 18, 2001), known as Balthus, was a Polish-French modern artist.

Throughout his career, Balthus rejected the usual conventions of the art world. He insisted that his paintings should be seen and not read about, and he resisted any attempts made to build a biographical profile. A telegram sent to the Tate Gallery as it prepared for its 1968 retrospective of his works read: "NO BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS. BEGIN: BALTHUS IS A PAINTER OF WHOM NOTHING IS KNOWN. NOW LET US LOOK AT THE PICTURES. REGARDS. B."

Born in Paris, in his formative years his art was sponsored by Rainer Maria Rilke, Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard and Pierre Matisse. His father, Erich Klossowski, a noted art historian who wrote a monograph on Daumier, and his mother, Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro (known as the painter Baladine Klossowska), were part of the cultural elite in Paris. Balthus's older brother, Pierre Klossowski, was a philosopher and writer influenced by theology and the works of the Marquis de Sade. Among the visitors and friends of the Klossowskis were famous writers such as André Gide and Jean Cocteau, who found some inspiration for his novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929) in his visits to the family.

In 1921 Mitsou, a book which included forty drawings by Balthus, was published. It depicted the story of a young boy and his cat, with a preface by Balthus's mentor, the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) who at the time was his mother's lover. The theme of the story foreshadowed his lifelong fascination with cats, which resurfaced with his self-portrait as The King of Cats (1935). In 1926 he visited Florence, copying frescos by Piero della Francesca, which inspired another early ambitious work by the young painter: the tempera wall paintings of the Protestant church of the Swiss village of Beatenberg (1927). From 1930 to 1932 he lived in Morocco, was drafted into the Moroccan infantry in Kenitra and Fes, worked as a secretary, and sketched his painting La Caserne (1933).