Balthus: A Biography By: Nicholas Fox Weber

Author: Nicholas Fox Weber

The first full-scale biography of one of the most elusive and enigmatic painters of our time – the self-proclaimed Count Balthus Klossowski de Rola – whose brilliantly rendered, markedly sexualized portraits, especially of young girls, are among the most memorable images in contemporary art.. “In 1934 his first exhibition, in Paris, stunned the art world. The seven canvases drew attention to his extraordinary technique – a mix of tradition and imagination informed by the work of Piero della Francesca, Courbet, and Joseph Reinhardt, but unique to the twenty-six-year-old artist – and to their provocative content; one of the paintings, The Guitar Lesson, was so powerful in its sadomasochistic imagery that it was deemed necessary to remove it from public display.. “Continuously since then, Balthus’s work has provoked both great opprobrium and profound admiration – as has the artist himself, whether collaborating with Antonin Artaud on his Theater of Cruelty, transforming the Villa Medici into the social center of Fellini’s Rome in the 1950s, or competing for the artistic limelight with his friends Picasso and Andre Derain.. “The artist’s complexities are clarified and his genius understood in a book that derives its particular immediacy from Weber’s long and intense conversations with Balthus – who never previously consented to discuss his life and work with a biographer – as well as his interviews with the painter’s closest friends, members of his family, and many of the subjects of his controversial canvases.

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