Balthus stars in an exhibition at the Beyeler Foundation in Basel

The Beyeler Foundation in Basel is hosting, from September 2, 2018 to January 1, 2019, the exhibition Balthus, dedicated to the great artist whose real name was Balthasar KÅ‚ossowski de Rola (Paris, 1908 - Rossinière, 2001): it is the first comprehensive survey of Balthus ’s work ever organized in German-speaking Switzerland, as well as the first exhibition on Balthus in a Swiss museum in a decade. It is an exhibition linked to the territory: indeed, it is well known that Balthus spent his childhood in Bern, Geneva and Beatenberg and that, after his marriage to Antoinette de Watteville, the artist stayed for a long time in French-speaking and German-speaking Switzerland, ending his days in the village of Rossinière, where he spent most of the last decades of his existence.

Balthus , considered, one of the greatest masters of the twentieth century, is also one of the most singular artists of the twentieth century: in fact, in his complex, multifaceted work, revered by some and rejected by others, Balthus pursued an alternative artistic path, almost opposed to the currents of the modern avant-garde. In this solitary path, the eccentric painter relates himself to a vast number of predecessors and artistic and historical traditions: his distance from modernism, in particular, leads Balthus to develop a unique form of avant-garde that appears increasingly relevant today.

The exhibition’s starting point is the monumental Passage du Commerce-Saint-André, made between 1952 and 1954 and on long-term loan to the Beyeler Foundation: this enigmatic painting unites in an exemplary way Balthus’s intense preoccupations with the spatial and temporal dimensions of the image and their relationship between figure and object. Following the thread of these considerations, this exhibition brings together some 40 major works, representative of all the artist’s creative periods. From this perspective, the sometimes provocative strategies of Balthus’s pictorial staging will be highlighted, and, above all, the irony and abyss of his art.His works, at once quietly moving, converge opposites and uniquely unite dream and reality, eroticism and innocence, objectivity and mystery, as well as the familiar and the unusual.

The Balthus exhibition is supported by Beyeler-Stiftung, Hansjörg Wyss, Wyss Foundation and L. & Th. La Roche Stiftung. More info can be found on the Beyeler Foundation website.

Balthus stars in an exhibition at the Beyeler Foundation in Basel

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