***January 2006*** |
|
Balthus
February 29, 1908 - February 19, 2001
|
| |
 |
| Born during a leap year on February
29th, 1908 in Paris, France, Balthus first came into
the world known as Balthasar Klossowski, the second
son of Polish artist immigrants. The artist's father,
Erich Klossowski, was an art historian, painter and
part-time stage designer, while his mother, Elisabeth
Dorothea Spiro was a painter who exhibited her often
explicit work under a number of male aliases. When Balthus
was 9 years old, his parents were deported from France
as "hostile immigrants", and were forced to
move to Berlin. The family's sudden and abject poverty
led to a split between the parents, with Balthus and
his brother accompanying his mother to Geneva, Switzerland.
Balthus' mother, who often went by the name "Spiro",
soon set up housekeeping with the wealthy German poet
Rainier Maria Rilke, who became the young artist's benefactor.
By 1924 Rilke had sponsored the young Balthus's return
to France, introducing him to the influential figures
of Paris art and literature as well as teachers. Two
years later in 1926, Rilke sponsored a nearly year-long
tour of study for the artist in Italy, which came to
an abrupt end when Rilke died.
|
|
|
With the death of his mentor and financial sponsor, Balthus returned
to Paris, where he continued to paint, copying the great masters
and working on improving himself as an artist. During the 1930s
he lived and worked in Paris, struggled to make a living as an painter,
appreciated only by a small handful of artists and writers including
Picasso, Giacometti, Salvador Dali and Camus, and supported by a
small consortium of patrons.Though his landscape and figure/portrait
studies were somewhat favourably received, it wasn't until 1934,
when the artist's semi erotic and scantily clad young women in provocative
and compromising poses made the art community stand up and take
notice, even if only to debate whether he was a genius or a pornographer.
Balthus married Antoinette de Watteville in 1937, and in 1939 was
drafted into the French military during World War II. Balthus served
less than a year's enlistment before he was discharged because of
illness, relocating with his wife to Fribourg and eventually the
Villa Diodate near Geneva, Switzerland. |
| |
|
| |
| As Balthus' fame spread with exhibitions
in America at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, Metropolitan
Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art as well as
galleries in France and England, he became more reclusive
and eccentric. While he was always socially accepted
by the royalty of the art world, the artist adopted
the habit of speaking about himself in the third person,
or, more often, not speaking at all and retiring into
self-imposed exile at any one of his many chateaus or
villas to create his work. Balthus' work now began to
achieve the widespread recognition that had previously
eluded him. |
|
|
|
| |
 |
In 1961 he left his state of isolation after being
appointed Director of the French Academy in Rome. He
continued to paint and work until once again his quest
for seclusion and inspiration led him to Japan in the
1960s, where he met and later married Japanese artist
Setsuko Ideta in 1967. His wife soon became the subject
of the artist's works, as well as mother to a son who
died in infancy, and their daughter, Harumi. Though
35 years younger than her husband, Setsuko proved a
muse, caretaker and constant companion for Balthus,
accompanying him to Switzerland in 1976 when he established
himself in a 200 year old chateau in the village of
Rossenier near Gstaad. |
|
|
| |
Balthus continued painting and gaining more and more widespread
recognition for his work. Right around this time, the Tate Gallery
of London had a retrospective showing of his work, and many galleries
followed suite. In 1999, Balthus collaborated on his life story
and retrospective, Balthus: A Biography, and gave permission to
the Picasso Museum of Paris to create a compilation of his work.
After literally decades of refusal to have his photograph taken,
Balthus permitted himself to be photographed at his 92nd birthday
gala in 2000, claiming that, as a Leap Year birth, he was only 23.
The celebration was attended by a select list of European royalty,
heads of state, and celebrities from around the world.
A deliberate enigma, self-styled recluse, controversial eccentric
and revered by some as one of the great realist painters of the
20th century, Balthus died at his chateau near Gstaad, Switzerland
in 2001. Rarely in contact with the public, the artist had been
suffering from lengthy respiratory illness. |
| |
|
|
