Balthus

Paris-born figurative painter associated with the School of Paris, known for tightly constructed interiors, street scenes, landscapes, and portraits of adolescents.

In images

Details

Lived: 1908–2001
Born: 29 February 1908
Birthplace: Paris, France
Birth name: Balthasar Klossowski
Died: 18 February 2001 · aged 92
Place of death: Rossinière, Switzerland
Nationality: French
Profession: Painter and former director of the French Academy in Rome
Major works: The Street (1933), The Mountain (1937), The Room (1952–1954)
Married: Antoinette de Watteville · 1937–1966Setsuko Ideta · 1967–2001
Children: Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, Thadée Klossowski de Rola, Harumi Klossowska de Rola
Roles: Painter
Also known as: Balthasar Klossowski de Rola

About Balthus

A Paris childhood in an artistic family

Balthus was born Balthasar Klossowski in Paris in 1908. His parents moved in artistic and literary circles, and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke encouraged the boy's drawings. Rilke arranged the 1921 publication of Mitsou, a sequence about a lost cat drawn when Balthus was eleven.

Balthus trained himself through sustained study of older painting. He copied works in the Louvre and traveled to Italy to study Renaissance frescoes. That training remained visible in the measured spaces and firm outlines of his mature pictures.

The cour de Rohan studio

His first Paris exhibition in 1934 established the subjects that would define his reputation: closed rooms, figures absorbed in reading or reverie, and city scenes in which separate actions occupy the same constructed space. During the later 1930s he worked at 3 cour de Rohan in the 6th arrondissement.

Between 1936 and 1939 he painted Thérèse Blanchard, a young neighbor, alone and with members of her family. The resulting pictures are among his best-known works. Their controlled compositions and adolescent subjects have also made them the center of continuing argument about his art.

Recognition and distance

Pablo Picasso acquired The Children, Balthus's 1937 painting of Thérèse and Hubert Blanchard, and spoke admiringly of the younger painter's work. Balthus nevertheless kept his distance from the dominant movements of twentieth-century art and continued to work through older pictorial structures.

He later directed the French Academy in Rome and settled in Switzerland. When he died in 2001, the Metropolitan Museum of Art described him as the last surviving master of the School of Paris, a label grounded in the Paris years in which his major subjects and public reputation first formed.

Life events

1908
Born in Paris as Balthasar Klossowski.
— Balthus Remembered
1921
Rainer Maria Rilke arranges publication of the childhood drawing sequence Mitsou.
— Balthus: Cats and Girls — Paintings and Provocations
1934
Holds his first major exhibition in Paris.
— Balthus (1956)
1936–1939
Paints the series of portraits of Thérèse Blanchard in Paris.
— Balthus: Cats and Girls — Paintings and Provocations
1967–2001
Marries Setsuko Ideta and spends his final decades with her at the Grand Chalet in Rossinière.
Balthus with Setsuko Klossowska de Rola in 1996 at the Grand Chalet in Rossinière. (Damian Pettigrew)
— Balthus Remembered
2001
Dies in Rossinière, Switzerland.
— Balthus Remembered

People they knew

Documented connections — every one carries its source.

Alberto Giacometti

Sculptor
Painter

Met

Balthus and Giacometti belonged to overlapping Paris circles and maintained a friendship across their mature careers.

— Derain, Balthus, Giacometti: An Artistic Friendship

Pablo Picasso

Painter
Sculptor

Supported by · 1937

Picasso acquired Balthus's 1937 painting The Children and continued to speak admiringly of the younger painter's work. The painting later entered the Musée Picasso through Picasso's collection.

— Balthus (1956), p. 6

Rainer Maria Rilke

Poet
Author

Mentored by · 1920

Rilke encouraged Balthus's childhood drawings and arranged the 1921 publication of Mitsou with his own preface.

— Balthus: Cats and Girls — Paintings and Provocations

Balthus’s Places

The cataloged places connected to Balthus — through the books, and through the documented record.

Places you can enter today appear first, followed by addresses to see from outside and sites that have vanished.

Color editorial illustration of the Louvre Pyramid centered among the palace façades under a blue sky

Museum · Louvre

Open — go in

Musée du Louvre

As a young painter, Balthus studied the Old Masters in the Louvre; the museum training helped form the measured spaces and firm outlines of his mature work.

Visit the place