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Greenwich, CT - The Palazzo Grassi, Venice, has requested the loan by Chalk & Vermilion Fine Arts, the parent company of
Martin Lawrence Galleries, of the Balthus work Le chat au miroir III (Cat with Mirror III) for the most
important one-man show devoted to the artist since 1985-86 retrospective held at the Centre Pompidou,
Paris and New York's Museum of Modern Art.
The upcoming retrospective, much desired by the legendarily reclusive artist and his family, has been conceived
to present a large body of Balthus' major works. Some of these works will be shown in public for the first time
in up to forty years. The exhibition will include loans from important European and American museums and from
private collections. Thérèse (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), The Street (MoMA), Golden Days (Hirshhorn Museum),
and Cathy's Dressing (Centre Georges Pompidou) are also among works already committed for loan to the retrospective.
Balthus (Balthazar Klossowski de Rola), widely regarded as one of the most important figurative painters of the modern era,
has alternately been called realist, formalist and mystic. Born 1908 in Paris to parents who themselves were serious, progressive painters,
Balthus chose to work in a figurative manner at a time when avant-garde artists considered figuration either reactionary or serving
the interests of politics. Balthus derives the representational syntax of his work in part through surrealism, while giving form
to the idea of art as magical mirror grounded in the pictorial and technical achievements of the Renaissance. Balthus' favored
subject matter are distinctive portraits, often dreamy, sensual and enigmatic, and brooding landscapes. More recent paintings,
Le chat au miroir III prominent among them, have taken longer to complete, as the artist builds layer upon layer of contrasting hues,
achieving extraordinary textures and a strange, hidden intensity of unusual subtlety.
Self-taught, having learned his craft by copying the great masters, Balthus' had his first one-man show in 1934 at the age of 26.
Among the many one-man shows during Balthus' career were retrospectives at the Tate Gallery, the Musèe National d'Art Moderne,
Centre Georges Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum, the Musée des Beaux Arts in Lausanne, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte
Reina Sofía in Madrid. Balthus currently resides in Switzerland.
Recently Chalk & Vermilion owners David and Leslee Rogath have loaned original works by such artists as Pablo Picasso,
René Magritte, Alexander Calder, Sam Francis, and Andy Warhol to major museums worldwide including the Whitney Museum of Art,
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Galerie
Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris, and the Museu Picasso in Barcelona.
The Balthus retrospective, exclusively at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, will run from September 2001 to January 2002.
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