Galerie Buchholz

Antonin Artaud

Info: The painter Balthus met the writer and actor Antonin Artaud on the terrace of Les Deux Magots in the fall of 1932. Struck by their uncanny resemblance, Artaud approached Balthus and introduced himself. This encounter marked the beginning of an intense albeit short-lived friendship – one that revolved precisely around the concept of the double. Balthus had recently returned from Bern, where he had been staying with Antoinette de Watteville, a Swiss aristocrat with whom he had been in love for several years. He left in despair after learning of her engagement to a local diplomat. Upon his return to Paris, he began work on a project that reflected his own romantic crisis: a series of pen-and-ink illustrations for Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. The doomed love story between the foundling Heathcliff and well-bred Cathy Earnshaw – who went against her heart to marry her high-born neighbor Edgar Linton – offered a direct parallel to Balthus’s own seemingly impossible desire for de Watteville. (…) Location: Christophstr. 18, 50670 Cologne / The exhibition is open by appointment only post@galeriebuchholz.de →

Vincent Fecteau