| ZURICH - realist painter BALTHUS
dies aged 92. The French-born painter managed to paint in a style that
appealed to the establishment's so called 'good taste' despite painting
mainly naked pubescent girls.
Last year in an interview with
Nicholas Glass the British Channel 4 News arts correspondent, Balthus recalled
the Paris exhibition in 1934 in which he showed the controversial painting
'The Guitar Lesson'. Paris was shocked by the frankly erotic image of a
naked young girl in the lap of her music teacher. According to the artist,
he had well anticipated the public reaction.
"I remember
I was very poor," he says. "The only way to get out of that state was to
make a scandal. It worked well, too well."
(Tuesday April 25,
2000, The Guardian)
In 1961, the Minister of Culture, Andre Malraux,
appointed Balthus director of the Villa Medicis, which is the seat of the
Academie de France in Rome; He would remain there for sixteen years and
there, among other creations, he was to paint 'The Turkish Room', his first
work to be bought by a French museum.
Born Count Balthazar Klossowski de Rola
of a Polish family living in Paris, Balthus was an assumed name, apparently
a friendly diminutive given him by the poet Rainer-Maria Rilke. Considered
a great and influential realist the artist enjoyed astounding success during
his life. He died in his secluded 18th-century chalet. Born on 29th February,
Balthus celebrated only 23 leap year birthdays, he died just ten days short
of his non-existent 93rd birthday.
The auction record for Balthus is $2,090,000
and was set at Christie's in 1989, for "Etude pour les trois soeurs."
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