Balthazar Klossowski, Count de Rola

Child Prodigy With Famous Friends.
Balthus' advanced age hides the fact that he was a child prodigy. The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke helped publish his first drawings when Balthus was only 13.
Born in Paris the son of a Polish father and a Russian Jewish mother, Balthus grew up in Berlin and Geneva before returning to Paris. Rilke, Matisse and Pierre Bonnard were among the famous friends of his parents.
He had his first exhibition in Paris in 1934 where he caused a stir with his erotic "Guitar Lessons". Pablo Picasso, Andre Derain and Joan Miro collected his works.
Miro called Balthus, who never attended an art school, "the greatest realist painter of his age."
Balthus was known for his provocative paintings of young women, often with surreal elements in the background.
Unlike most of his famous contemporaries, Balthus remained faithful to figurative art. His later works showed adolescent girls absorbed in romantic dreams.
The scenes in his paintings were in the "fin de siecle" style of the last century, bourgeois and slightly decadent salons, where girls are reading or sitting near an open fire.
The atmosphere of his work has been compared to the ambiance evoked by the books of French writer Marcel Proust. Balthus painted some 350 works, sketched a thousand drawings and compiled 50 sketch books.
While living largely as a recluse, Balthus was a welcome guest in modern high society and lately struck friendships with modern singers and actors.
At a birthday party in 2000, Tony Curtis and David Bowie were among the guests.

The aristocratic title he claimed, Count the Rola, is doubted by some.
This enigmatic painter died in februari 2001 (born 1908).

(source: Yahoo!)