Description

Master of stillness: Balthus, the most enigmatic painter of our time, in a large retrospective

In his multifaceted, multilayered oeuvre Balthus (1908–2001), one of the last great twentieth-century masters, pursued a path that ran exactly contrary to the modern avant-garde movements. As quiet as they are intriguing, his works feature colliding contrasts, combining reality and dream, eroticism and innocence, practicality and mystery, the familiar and the uncanny in unique ways.

The Fondation Beyeler’s retrospective unites around forty significant paintings from all phases of this legendary artist’s career, reflecting the ambiguous presentation of his imagery. The exhibition and its companion catalogue begin with the monumental, enigmatic masterpiece, Passage du Commerce-Saint-André (1952-54), in which Balthus’s intensive study of the dimensions of space and time and their relationship to figure and object is especially apparent.