The Guitar Lesson

The Guitar Lesson, from 1934, by Count Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, better known as Balthus, is a forbidden work. In 1934, it was shown in Paris for fifteen days only. Covered, in the gallery’s back room. In 1977, it appeared at Pierre Matisse’s 57th Street gallery in New York. It has never been exhibited again. Not even at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s ongoing show “Balthus: Cats and Girls.” After the 1977 exhibition, Matisse donated La Leçon de guitare to the MoMA. There it was stored until 1982, when Blanchette Rockefeller, MoMA’s president saw it and demanded that it goes back to Pierre Matisse.  He sold  it to Mike Nichols, then it was resold a few times, and it ended up with the Greek tycoon Niarchos. He kept it in his bedroom. Niarchos died in 1996, and The Guitar Lesson  remains with his heirs.

Balthus’ older brother was the philosopher Pierre Klossowski who wrote La Monnaie vivante, which Michel Foucault called “the most sublime book of our era.” Pierre also appeared in Robert Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar as the avaricious miller who desires Marie, played by Anne Wiazemsky.