Balthus

A Biography

Balthus is one of the most elusive and enigmatic painters of our time and his brilliantly rendered, erotic portraits, especially of young girls, are among the most provocative images of the century. This is the first full-scale biography of this remarkable and influential painter.

Born in Paris in 1908 to Polish parents, Balthus scored his initial artistic success at the age of twelve when he published forty of his drawings in a book about a cat that ran away. In 1934, Balthus's first exhibition in Paris stunned the art world because of the blatantly sexual content of the work. One of the paintings, "The Guitar Lesson", had to be kept in a private back room because of its powerful sado-masochistic imagery. Balthus's work has continuously provoked both great opprobrium and profound admiration.

Balthus himself has evolved from a struggling, impoverished painter to a luxury-loving aristocrat. In the early 1950s he began to use the title of the Count of Rola. In the 1960s, he became director of the Villa Medici, transforming it into the social centre of Fellini's Rome. He now divides his time between a castle in Italy and the largest private chalet in Switzerland, intriguing the public both with his unique personal style and his deliberate aloofness.

This superb biography peels away the provocative persona Balthus constructed for himself to reveal the artist and the man. Nicholas Weber has had the full co-operation of Balthus who previously has declined to talk about either his life or his work and has been notoriously inventive and enigmatic about both.