London - Artist, novelist, historian, philosopher and theologian, Pierre Klossowski’s life-size mythological and allegorical images of the body create an intense world of violence and passion.  Born in Paris in 1905 Pierre Klossowski’s close relationships with Rainer Maria Rilke and André Gide led him to study philosophy before starting his career as a writer and translator.  In the 1930s he befriended Georges Bataille and formed original and controversial stances on theological issues and the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade.  With the outbreak of World War II he studied with the Dominican priesthood in occupied Paris, but later decided against monastic life when he married Denise Marie Roberte Morin-Sinclaire in 1947, who became a muse for his writing and drawing.

Following his controversial publication about the Marquis de Sade, Sade mon prochain (1947), Klossowski’s artistic career began in 1954 when he produced six illustrations for the first novel of an erotic trilogy, Roberte, ce soir, which he made after he rejected the illustrations commissioned from his younger brother, the painter Balthus.  His contemporaries, including Robert Lebel, André Masson and Alberto Giacometti, encouraged him to pursue his drawing and to hold his first exhibition in 1956.  This led to many exhibitions internationally, the acclaim of eminent thinkers including Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Jean-Francois Lyotard and continued to inspire generations of artists until his death in 2001.

Pierre Klossowski surveys the whole of his fascinating artistic career, with over 40 large-scale drawings dating from 1952 to 1988, 3 life-size resin sculptures made in 1990, several films, interviews, production stills and printed material.  The exhibition focuses on key themes that recur throughout his work; Diana and Acteon; The Parallel Bars; Gulliver; Knights Templars and Le Baphomet.

Pierre Klossowski is in the Lower Galleries at the Whitechapel while Hans Bellmer is in the Upper Galleries.  The exhibitions are the first major retrospectives of two of France’s most intriguing 20^th century artists and reveal how their careers developed amid the encouragement of an intellectual artistic and literary circle.  Often controversial they offer a radical stance through their, often erotic, representations of the body. 

Notes

• Pierre Klossowski was born in Paris in 1905. He translated Virgil’s Aeneid and texts by Kafka, Kierkegaard, Klee and Nietzsche.  His artistic career began when he illustrated his first novel Roberte, ce soir in 1954.  By the 1970s, his art was being exhibited across Europe and reached audiences in Mexico and Japan by the late 1980s.  In 1981 he had a major retrospective at the Kunsthalle, Bern and in 1982 he represented France at Documenta 7.  He worked with many filmmakers: Pierre Zucca and Raoul Ruiz in the early 1970s and Pierre Couliboeuf, Michel Nuridsany and Alain Fleischer in the 1980s.  In the early 1990s he collaborated with the sculptor Jean-Paul Réti. He lived in Paris until his death in 2001.
  
• Pierre Klossowski is initiated by the Whitechapel, curated by Sarah Wilson, and organized by Anthony Spira, curator, Whitechapel.  On exhibition until 19 November, 2006.