The Street

1930–1931

Serves in the French army in Morocco

Drafted into the Moroccan infantry, Balthus serves as a secretary in Kenitra and Fez and sketches for the painting La Caserne (1933).

1930s

His Paris circle: Artaud, Giacometti, Miró, Derain

Back in Paris, Balthus joins the circle of the Surrealists; his work is admired early on by André Breton and Pablo Picasso. His friends include the writers Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Henri Michaux, Michel Leiris and René Char, the photographer Man Ray, the playwright Antonin Artaud, and the painters André Derain, Joan Miró and Alberto Giacometti, one of his most faithful friends.

1933

Moves to Paris, to a studio on Rue de Furstemberg

Balthus settles in Paris, taking a studio on Rue de Furstemberg; later he will move to another studio nearby, at the Cour de Rohan.

1934

First exhibition at Galerie Pierre in Paris

Balthus’s first exhibition, at Galerie Pierre, causes a scandal; the works shown include The Guitar Lesson (1934), as well as The Street, Cathy Dressing and Alice (all 1933).

1935

Designs Artaud’s “The Cenci”

Balthus designs the sets and costumes for Artaud’s adaptation of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Cenci; other accounts date this production to 1944.