SWITZERLAND: I lived there so long that I managed to believe that I was Swiss. I discovered this country during the First World War. I would have so much to say about it … Switzerland played an important part in my youth and, since then, I keep going back, almost as if by chance… (Balthus)

The next exhibition to be held at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny will be the 100th Anni-versary of Balthus, organised by Jean Clair and Dominique Radrizzani, which will concentrate on Balthus’s masterpieces in Martigny. This event will mark several anniversaries – firstly the painter’s centenary as such, then also the twenty-fifth anniversary of his rediscovery at the great retrospective at the Georges Pompidou National Culture and Art Centre in 1983, as well as the thirtieth anniversary of the inauguration of the Fondation Pierre Gianadda on 19 November 1978.
It is not the first time that Balthus has gone Valaisan. It is even in the Valais that everything began, close to Sierre where, each year, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke invited the mother and children to come and holiday at his castle in Muzot. Rilke was to preface the volume, Mitsou, by the very young Bal-thus (drawn at 11 years of age, published at 13) and the first known picture - Paysage de Muzot, painted in 1922 at the age of 15 years, also testifies to a “childhood Valais”.
Often, going against the flow and shunning the vanguardists, Balthus was soon, in the secrecy of his Parisian studio, to develop a unique and mysterious style, which harked back to the painting of the Italian Quattrocento (in particular that of Piero della Francesca) and prolonged the great French tradi-tion (Poussin, Ingres, Courbet). As Alberto Giacometti, whom he came to know and who was to be-come his best friend, Balthus was wary of Surrealism and stuck firmly to figuration, the complicated mysteries of which he explored, not hesitating to turn to the – at that time decried – teachings of André Derain (which were deemed far too conservative).
The retrospective takes you through all of Balthus’s periods and topics – portraits and landscapes, while not forgetting the languishing young nymphs which constitute the major ingredient of the “Bal-thus mystery” (Thérèse rêvant, Jeune fille endormie, Les Beaux Jours).
The exhibition compares Balthus’s two mythical urban landscapes, La Rue of 1933 (the first of the artist’s works to hang in the New York Museum of Modern Art during his lifetime) and Le Passage du Commerce-Saint-André, painted twenty years later. Two archetypes of the view of the city, two icons of the street which, while strangely describing the theatre of life, place Balthus in “the great tradition of painting for which the canvass is a geometrical space to be filled” (Antonin Artaud).
In 1933, La Toilette de Cathy (presented for the first time in Switzerland) results from a project to illustrate Hauts de Hurlevent. Balthus – who was close to Antonin Artaud and his “Theatre of Cru-elty” – produced the sets and costumes for the famous production of Cenci. His illustration project reflects a deep interior revolt and contains the seeds of a whole aesthetic system. Balthus wrote, “I want to put many, many things into this – tenderness, childish nostalgia, dreams, love, death, cruelty, crime, violence, cries of hatred, roaring and tears! All that, everything that is hidden within us, an image of all the essential elements of the human being stripped of his thick crust of cowardly hypoc-risy! A synthetic picture of man such as he would be if he could still be great.”
From Mitsou (1919) to the Lever (1978), passing through Thérèse rêvant, Le Salon II or Les Poissons rouges, Balthus’s universe is inhabited by the cat – his fetish animal. Balthus, readily affected mys-tery, irony and distance, representing himself as a Roi des chats (1935) and, in a letter of his Corre-spondance amoureuse perfectly contemporary to the execution of this very famous self-portrait, he wrote: “Long live the Cats! and let us sit on our wall and look at people with our scorning, haughty irony as they rush about like demented things and misbehave themselves.” Some fifteen years later, the amusing (and amused) Chat de la Méditerranée is still a self-portrait.
Apart from an anthological trip through the pictorial genius of Balthus, a whole room is devoted to his extraordinarily perceptive and sensual drawings.

1908 : Balthasar Klossowski, known as Balthus was born in Paris on 29 February. He was the sec-ond son of Erich Klossowski (1875-1946), a painter and art historian, and of Elizabeth Dorothea Spiro (1886-1969), known as Baladine. His elder brother was the writer and draftsman, Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001). Eric and Dorothea settled in the Montparnasse district in 1903 and were involved with René Auberjonois, Pierre Bonnard and Rainer Maria Rilke.
1914 : The family, being of German nationality, was forced to leave France. After being taken in by Professor Jean Strohl in Zurich, they settled in Berlin.
1917 : The Klossowskis separated. The mother and children stayed in Bern for a few months be-fore settling in Geneva in November.
1919 : Balthus was enrolled at Calvin College. He produced Mitsou. Spent the Summer in Beaten-berg.
1921 : Publication of Mitsou with a foreword by Rilke. In the Spring, Baladine and her sons moved back to Berlin. Summer spent in Muzot with Rilke.
1923: In May, Baladine and Balthus leave Berlin definitively for Beatenberg.
1924 : Spring in Paris. Summer in Beatenberg, where he became acquainted with Antoinette de Watteville, then twelve years old. In Paris, he showed his drawings to Bonnard and Maurice Denis, who advise to him to copy the Poussins in the Louvre.
1926 : Thanks to the patronage of Professor Jean Strohl, he spent the Summer in Tuscany copying the frescos by Piero della Francesca and Masaccio.
1930 : He spent several weeks that Summer at the Wattevilles and took a fancy to Antoinette, of whom he painted the first portrait. In October, he did his military service in Morocco, ini-tially in Kenitra then in Fès, until December 1931.
1932 : Spent May to October at the Wattevilles in Bern. Visited Auberjonois in Lausanne. Worked on illustrations for Wuthering Heights.
1933 : From March, rented a studio in Paris. Got together with Jouve. Derain gave him technical advice. La Rue. Visited André Breton, at the head of a delegation of Surrealists (Paul Eluard, Alberto Giacometti, etc.). Balthus’s naturalist approach disappointed them. Picked up with Giacometti.
1934 : Visited Picasso. In April, exhibited at the Pierre Gallery (Jeune fille en costume d’amazone, La Leçon de guitare which caused a scandal).
1935 : Created the sets and costumes for Cenci by Artaud. Published eight illustrations for Wuther-ing Heights in Minotaure. Produced Le Roi des chats and a first study of La Montagne.
1937: Married Antoinette de Watteville on 2 April.
1939 : Mobilised and sent to Alsace in September where he was wounded and returned to Paris in December.
1940 : Settled in Champrovent with Antoinette.
1942 : Given the advance of the Germans, he left Champrovent and settled with Antoinette in Bern then Fribourg. Birth of his son, Stanislas.
1943 : In November, the Moos Gallery in Geneva devoted an exhibition to him.
1944 : Birth of his son Thadée.
1945 : Settled in the Villa Diodati in Cologny, close to Geneva, became involved with the pub-lisher, Albert Skira, became acquainted with André Malraux, met up with Giacometti again.
1946 : Opening of the L’Ecole de Paris exhibition prepared by Balthus in the Bern Kunsthalle. Separated from Antoinette and returned to Paris.
1953 : Left Paris and settled at Chassy Castle. Frédérique Tison, his niece by marriage, joined him and was to remain with him until 1962.
1956 : Exhibition at the New York Museum of Modern Art.
1961 : André Malraux, Minister of Culture, had him appointed Director of the Academy of France at the Villa Médicis, the building of which he immediately began to restore.
1962 : Malraux sent him on mission to Japan, where he met his future wife, Setsuko Ideta, who soon followed him to Rome.
1966 : Retrospective at the Paris Museum of Decorative Arts.
1967: Married Setsuko Ideta in Japan.
1968 : Retrospective at the Tate Gallery.
1970 : The first drawings of Monte Calvello, the medieval castle which he bought close to Viterbe
1973 : Birth of his daughter, Harumi.
1977 : Settled at the Grand Châlet in Rossinière.
1983 : Retrospective at the Georges Pompidou National Centre of Art and Culture in Paris.
1993 : Retrospective at the Cantonal Fine Arts Museum in Lausanne.
1999 : Publication of the Catalogue raisonné by Jean Clair and Virginie Monnier.
2001 : Balthus died on 18 February at the Grand Châlet in Rossinière. Great retrospective of his work at the Venice Palazzo Grassi in Autumn.
2002 : Balthus Retrospective: De Piero della Francesca to Alberto Giacometti at the Janisch Mu-seum in Vevey.
2003 : La Jeunesse de Balthus, 1st exhibition of the Balthus Foundation at the Grand Châlet in Rossinière (Switzerland). Followed by Henri Cartier-Bresson et Martine Franck chez Bal-thus (2004); Les Desseins de Balthus (2005); La Magie du paysage (2006); Le Mystère des chats (2007).
2008 : Balthus (100th anniversary) at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny (Switzer-land).

The exhibition catalogue reproduces all the exposed works in full colour and includes texts by various authors and specialists, who explain the multiple facets of Balthus: Jean Clair, Robert Kopp, Raymond Mason, Dominique Radrizzani, Jean Starobinski, Camille Viéville, Frédéric Wandelère.
Selling price CHF 45.-- (approx. € 30.--)
Special Swiss Rail “RailAway” offer: 20% reduction on the train journey, transfer from the station and admission to the Fondation.

The Franck Collection,
The Sculpture Park,
The Gallo-Roman Museum,
The Motor Museum
Leonardo da Vinci, the inventor
open daily
from 9 am to 7 pm
from 16 June to 23 November 2008