Balthus #7

Balthus’s unfinished painting in his studio, Rossinière, Switzerland.

"Several years after the death of Balthus, some 2,000 photographic documents were found in his studio at the Grand Chalet in Rossinière, Switzerland. These previously undiscovered documents have been carefully preserved and edited to form a chronological archive catalogued by theme, pose, composition, subject, object, motif, and place, thus creating a coherent corpus that allows a fuller understanding of the painter’s lengthy preparatory process.

The last studies of Balthus, executed over the final eight years of his life, are the preliminary preparations for his last six paintings, three of which remain unfinished. As old age affected his ability to draw, he resorted to the Polaroid camera as a kind of prosthetic tool — at once hand and pencil — to access once more the mysterious sketching ritual that allowed him to discover and gradually create the fundamental idea from which the pictorial image emerges. These photographs are thus part of a minutely precise practice, as well as of Balthus’s persistent quest for beauty.
...." (bron: purple.fr, foto: Benoit Peverelli)

Kijk voor de polaroids van Balthus bij de bron (hk).