Solo Exhibition of Balthus in Opens at Museum Ludwig

Written by Sean Sprague Friday, 25 February 2011 23:38

 

COLOGNE, GERMANY - Museum Ludwig proudly presents the first-ever solo exhibition of the French painter Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski, 29.02.1908 -18.02.2001) in Germany. On show will be around 70 outstanding paintings and drawings from the years 1932 to 1960, on loan from international public and private collections. 

The beginning of this period was marked by the scandal prompted by Balthus’ first exhibition, which was put on in 1934 in Galerie Pierre in Paris. The large canvases that he showed depicted traditional motifs, such as a street scene, a music lesson, or girl at a window, which were as such fairly innocuous. But the provocative eroticism in his paintings pushed the viewers to the brink of moral outrage. Over the following decades Balthus portrayed his contemporaries, painted landscapes and streetscapes, and returned time and again to young girls in the moment of transition to adulthood.

Although during this period abstract and surrealist painting was at its zenith, Balthus cast his figurative motifs in a “timeless realism”, as he termed it. The influence of the Italian Quattrocento and French classicism, as well as his adoption of the painting techniques of the old masters, placed him in the position of an “eccentric oddity” on the contemporary art scene. And yet he has come to be prized as a companion of Alberto Giacometti, Antonin Artaud, Paul Éluard and Albert Camus.

Despite the friends and family ties that linked Balthus with Germany, his paintings are relatively unknown here and not to be found in any of the public collections. After the exhibitions of paintings by Edward Hopper and Salvador Dalí, Museum Ludwig is now continuing its series of monographic exhibitions of great 20th century painters by honoring this important artist.

The collection of the Museum Ludwig comprises the most important stages and positions in the development of 20th century art and contemporary art. Roy Lichtenstein’s “Maybe“, Andy Warhol’s “Brillo Boxes“ and George Segal’s “Restaurant Window”, all icons of American Pop Art, had just been completed when in 1969 they were included as loans in the collection of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum. The works came from Peter and Irene Ludwig who have built up the biggest collection of Pop Art outside the USA. In 1976 the Museum Ludwig was founded with a gift of 350 works of modern art by the Ludwigs. It was to be the first museum in Cologne to exhibit contemporary art.

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