Balthus's lifelong curiosity with the ambiguities and dark side of childhood resulted in his best-known and most iconic works. In these pictures, Balthus (1908-2001) mingles intuition into his young sitters' psyches with overt erotic desire and forbidding austerity, making them among the most powerf[...]

Balthus (1908-2001) is one of the truly enigmatic personalities among the painters of the 20th century. Born Balthazar Klossowski de Rola, he grew up in Berlin, Switzerland and Paris, and later moved back and forth between France, the Far East and Rome. Continually crossing all sorts of borders, he [...]