Balthus, (Balthasar Klossowski, 1908 – 2001), is currently featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. “Focusing on his finest works, the exhibition will be limited to approximately thirty-five paintings dating from the mid-1930s to the 1950s. Between 1936 and 1939, Balthus painted his celebrated series of portraits of Thérèse Blanchard, his young neighbor in Paris. Thérèse posed alone, with her cat, or with her two brothers… Never before shown in public will be the series of forty small ink drawings for Mitsou, in which the eleven-year-old Balthus evoked his adventures with a stray tomcat and which were published by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke in 1921…This is the first exhibition of the artist’s works in this country in thirty years.”
Balthus: Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations
Until January 12, 2014
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
5th Ave and 86 Street, NYC