(February 29, 1908 in Paris –
February 18, 2001 in Rossinière, Switzerland)
French painter, illustrator and stage designer. Appreciated for many years by
only a handful of collectors, and ostensibly out of step with the modern
movement, Balthus’s classically inspired work won the recognition and admiration
of a wider public only late in his career. Although he received no formal
training, he came from a highly artistic family background. His father, Erich
Klossowski (1875–1949), was a painter and art historian, born to an aristocratic
family in East Prussia and the author of a book on Daumier; his brother, PIERRE
KLOSSOWSKI, was to become a painter and writer; and his mother, Elizabeth Spiro,
was also a painter. Beginning in 1919, she engaged, under the name of Baladine,
in a long-lasting relationship with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, providing
etchings to accompany many of his poems. In this environment Balthus met the
writers André Gide and Pierre-Jean Jouve, as well as Pierre Bonnard, who gave
him his earliest guidance. Rilke also acted as Balthus’s mentor, writing the
preface for an album of drawings by the 13-year-old artist entitled Mitsou
(Zurich, 1921), the story of a cat in which narrative themes and stylistic
traits of the later work are already apparent.
