The Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien presents the first retrospective in Austria ever dedicated to Count Balthasar Klossowksi de Rola, called Balthus (1908-2001).
Influenced by the art of the Quattrocento, Surrealism, Neue Sachlichkeit and in his later works by East Asian art, Balthus cultivated a style of his own, promoting "another Modernism” remote from the development of all avant-garde movements. His mysterious, archaic and uncanny images seem to conjure up, among other things, the fantasies of childhood, while not avoiding a certain cruelty.
The exhibition reviews all the major themes in Balthus' work: landscape - from the contrasting polarities of urban landscape and pastoral nature; portrait - from a classical approach to multiple figural compositions; and the female nude, from intimate toilette portrayals to complex interior compositions.
"I have always felt the need to search for the extraordinary in the ordinary, to suggest and not determine, always to leave something enigmatic in my pictures." —Balthus
BALTHUS
Balthasar Klossowski de Rola
24 February - 19 June 2016
Kunstforum WIEN | VIENNA, AUSTRIA
