Balthasar Klos­sowski de Rola, or bet­ter known sim­ply as Balthus, is a French painter whom worked in the mid-20th cen­tury. While he painted land­scapes, still life, and por­traits, he is best known for his con­tro­ver­sial depic­tion of ado­les­cent girls and women.

Balthus grew up to par­ents who were con­sid­ered intel­lec­tu­als — his father was an art his­to­rian and his mother a painter. This lead him to obtain artis­tic guid­ance dur­ing his for­ma­tive years from artists such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Mau­rice Denis, and Henri Matisse.

After mov­ing into his stu­dio in Paris in 1933, Balthus began to cre­ate work that would gain him noto­ri­ety and a last­ing rep­u­ta­tion. Although he took no inter­est in mod­ernist styles such as cubism, his con­tro­versy lay in his depic­tion of young girls, often in voyeuris­tic or erotic poses. Many of his paint­ings have the viewer peek­ing in on a pri­vate moment, leav­ing the viewer feel­ing uncomfortable.

The pres­ence of these women in his work are often charged with pedophilic over­tones, espe­cially in some of his paint­ings involv­ing more than one per­son. These dreamy girls in their stiff, almost stat­uesque poses have also been inter­preted as a truth­ful por­trayal of just how awk­ward ado­les­cence can be. Balthus has insisted that these works were not meant to be erotic, but acknowl­edged the dis­com­fort­ing facts of child­hood sexuality.

Laden with com­plex themes that are ripe to con­tro­versy and debate, I find Balthus’s work fas­ci­nat­ing for this. While not my favorite style of paint­ing, I do like his por­trayal of the fig­ure and how erie he can make his work. His paint­ings rep­re­sent two worlds, cre­at­ing an inter­est­ing dia­logue and jux­ta­po­si­tion between evoca­tive and innocence.

All images via the Art Insti­tute of Chicago, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum of Art, and the Hir­shorn.