BALTHUS - Girl and cat (1937)

 

Girl and cat

1937
Oil on the table (88x78 cm)
Private collection

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To create a painting, one does not necessarily have to resort to majestic scenes. Here we are faced with a moment of daily simplicity: a seated teenager, the lonely and desolate darkness of a room, a placid cat.

The picture, however, has something disturbing: the girl does not seem to have that innocence typical of her age but she is more sensual than one would expect.

Balthus was not satisfied with portraying a person and an animal in one place; wanted to do much more: he portrayed that moment of transition that everyone has experienced in which he passes from the innocent childhood age (of which the cat is an echo, for the many hours spent playing and the daydreams that lead us to talking to animals) to adulthood. It is no coincidence that the light falls unequivocally on the girl's legs.

Balthus never studied at the academy but this did not prevent him from deepening the work of artists such as Pierre Bonnard and André Derain, especially at the beginning of his career.

Balthus is known for the strong erotic charge that characterizes most of his works for which he has always favored as subjects women who sleep, read or daydream in bare places and with little light.

Comparing artists: Bonnard, Derain, Foujita, Rego, Schiele, Sherman