Baladine Klossowska
{{Short description|Polish painter (1886–1969)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2022}}
{{Infobox artist
| name = Baladine Klossowska
| image = Rilke and Klossowska at Chateau Muzot 1923.jpg
| caption = Klossowska (with Rilke) c. 1923
| birth_name = Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro
| birth_date = {{birth date|1886|10|21|df=y}}
| birth_place = Breslau, German Empire
| death_date = {{death date and age|1969|10|21|1886|10|21|df=y}}
| death_place = Bagneux, Hauts-de-Seine near Paris, France
| spouse = {{marriage|Erich Klossowski|1902|1917|end=separated}}
| partner = Rainer Maria Rilke
(1919–1926, his death)
| children = {{ubl|Balthassar Klossowski (Balthus)|Pierre Klossowski}}
}}
Baladine Klossowska or Kłossowska (21 October 1886 – 11 September 1969) was a German painter. Originating from an artistic Jewish family with roots in Lithuania, she moved from Breslau, Germany, to Paris, France, at the turn of the 20th century, where she was a vivid and active participant in the explosion of artistic experiment then active in the city.
She was mother to controversial modernist painter Balthus{{Cite news |last=Russell |first=John |author-link=John Russell (art critic) |date=19 February 2001 |title=Balthus, Painter Whose Suggestive Figures Caused a Stir, Is Dead at 92 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/19/arts/balthus-painter-whose-suggestive-figures-caused-a-stir-is-dead-at-92.html |url-access=registration |url-status=live |archive-url=https://archive.today/20230803-161822/https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/19/arts/balthus-painter-whose-suggestive-figures-caused-a-stir-is-dead-at-92.html |archive-date=3 August 2023 |access-date=3 November 2024 |work=The New York Times |pages=B.8}}{{Cite book |last=Clair |first=Jean |author-link=Jean Clair |title=Balthus |publisher=Thames & Hudson |year=2001 |isbn=9780500093030 |location=London |language=en |oclc=966133400}} as well as the writer Pierre Klossowski,{{Cite book |last1=Spira |first1=Anthony |title=Pierre Klossowski |last2=Wilson |first2=Sarah |publisher=Hatje Cantz |year=2006 |isbn=9783775717915 |location=Ostfildern, Germany |language=en |type=Exhibition catalog |oclc=122930869}} and the final muse and love of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.{{Cite book |last=Freedman |first=Ralph |title=Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke |publisher=Northwestern University Press |year=1998 |isbn=9780810115439 |location=Evanston, IL |language=en |oclc=38304334}}
Biography
= Early life =
Born Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro in Breslau, Germany (now Polish Wrocław), to a Jewish family. Her father, Abraham Baer Spiro (Shapiro), was a Lithuanian Jewish cantor, who moved his family from Korelichi in Novogrudok district of Minsk Governorate to Breslau in 1873.{{Cite web |title=Balthus | French painter |url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/50921/Balthus |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240619232447/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Balthus |archive-date=19 June 2024 |access-date=3 November 2024 |website=Encyclopedia Britannica}}{{Cite book |last=Riley |first=Charles A. |author-link=Charles A. Riley II |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sjBhEn_8MfMC&dq=kovelitz&pg=PA207 |title=Aristocracy and the Modern Imagination |publisher=University Press of New England |year=2001 |isbn=9781584651512 |location=Hanover, NH |pages=207 |language=en |oclc=47922732 |access-date=3 November 2024 |via=Google Books}}{{Cite book |last=Rewald |first=Sabine |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UO_HTonZ31cC&dq=Elisabeth+Dorothea+Spiro+minsk&pg=PR2 |title=Balthus |publisher=H.N. Abrams |year=1984 |isbn=9780810907386 |pages=11 |language=en |type=Exhibit catalog |oclc=10299729 |access-date=3 November 2024 |via=Google Books}} In Breslau, he was appointed a Chief cantor of the White Stork Synagogue – one of the two main synagogues of the city.{{Cite web |last=Kaderas |first=Laelia |date=26 July 2006 |title=Marmor, Prunk und große Namen |trans-title=Marble, splendor and big names |url=https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/allgemein/marmor-prunk-und-grosse-namen/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240804105417/https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/allgemein/marmor-prunk-und-grosse-namen/ |archive-date=4 August 2024 |access-date=3 November 2024 |website=Jüdische Allgemeine |language=de}}{{Cite book |last=Spiro |first=Peter |url=http://edition-memoria.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Spiro.pdf |title=Nur uns gibt es nicht wieder: Erinnerungen an meinen Vater Eugen Spiro, meine Vettern Balthus und Pierre Klossowski, die Zwanziger Jahre und das Exil |publisher=Edition Memoria |year=2010 |isbn=9783930353293 |location=Hürth bei Köln |language=de |trans-title=Only We Will Not Exist Again: Memories of My Father Eugen Spiro, My Cousins Balthus and Pierre Klossowski, the Twenties and Exile |type=Book cover |oclc=647901069 |access-date=3 November 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240826041512/http://edition-memoria.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Spiro.pdf |archive-date=26 August 2024 |url-status=live}}{{Cite news |last=Sielicki |first=Tomasz |title=Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu |trans-title=The Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław |url=http://slaskwroclaw.info/index3.php?id=cmentarz_zydowski |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140715010951/http://slaskwroclaw.info/index3.php?id=cmentarz_zydowski |archive-date=15 July 2014 |work=Slask Wroclaw |language=pl}} The Spiros were an artistically inclined family. Balandine's older brother Eugene Spiro became an artist-painter.
= Move to Paris =
Spiro married the painter and art historian Erich Klossowski in 1902. The couple left Breslau the same year, and were settled in Paris by 1903.{{Cite book |last=Rewald |first=Sabine |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tXO0AAAAQBAJ&dq=Elisabeth+Dorothea+Spiro&pg=PA19 |title=Balthus: Cats and Girls |publisher=Metropolitan Museum of Art |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-300-19701-3 |pages=19 |language=en |type=Exhibit catalog |oclc=858548847 |via=Google Books}} Their sons, Pierre (1905) and Balthasar (1908) were born in this new city.
Spiro embraced Paris with a new identity, becoming Baladine Klossowska (out of Balladyna, the heroine of Juliusz Słowacki's romantic drama).{{Citation |title=Baladine Klossowska |date=1 February 2022 |url=https://pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Baladine_Klossowska&oldid=66162108 |work=Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia |language=pl |access-date=5 May 2022}} Like many women in intellectual and artistic circles in Paris in the first decade of the new century, although preoccupied with tasks of household and home, Klossowska continued painting, if episodically.
= Displacement of WWI =
The Klossowskis were forced to leave France in 1914, at the start of World War I, due to their German citizenship. The couple separated permanently in 1917, and Klossowska took her sons to Switzerland. They moved to Berlin in 1921 due to financial pressures.{{Cite book |last=Lucie-Smith |first=Edward |author-link=Edward Lucie-Smith |url=https://archive.org/details/livesofgreattwen00luci/mode/2up?q=Balthus |title=Lives of the Great Twentieth Century Artists |publisher=Rizzoli |year=1986 |isbn=9780847807222 |location=New York |pages=299 |language=en |oclc=13185172 |ol=2710501M |access-date=3 November 2024 |via=Google Books}} Mother and sons returned to Paris in 1924, where the three for a time lived a materially marginal existence, often dependent upon help from friends and relations, until Pierre and Balthus became established professionally. Balthus, who became rich off of his paintings, later said of these times, "I was poor. The only option was to make a scandal. It worked well. Too well."{{Cite web |last=Glass |first=Nicholas |date=25 April 2000 |title='I was poor. The only option was to make a scandal. It worked well. Too well' |url=http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/apr/25/artsfeatures |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220530154814/https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/apr/25/artsfeatures |archive-date=30 May 2022 |access-date=30 May 2022 |website=The Guardian |language=en}}
= With Rilke in Switzerland =
Klossowska met Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) in 1919. They had previously known of each other in Paris, but had not been more than acquaintances. Rilke, eleven years Klossowska's senior, had during those Paris years socialized with an older generation of artists and intellectuals, while Klossowska and Erich had been young (if well-connected) upcomers.
In 1919, Rilke was emerging from a severe depression that had limited his writing to uncollected poems and a large number of letters, both during and after World War I. Klossowska has been described as both "inspiring" Rilke in his late poetry, and "suffering emotionally in his hands."{{Cite book |last1=Komar |first1=Kathleen L. |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NAuXDwAAQBAJ&dq=Baladine+Klossowska&pg=PA203 |title=Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus: Philosophical and Critical Perspectives |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2019 |isbn=978-0-19-068544-7 |editor-last=Eldridge |editor-first=Hannah Vandegrift |location=New York |pages=203 |language=en |chapter=The Feminine in Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus: A Philosophy of Productive Deprivation |oclc=1073033183 |editor-last2=Fischer |editor-first2=Luke |via=Google Books}} The two had an intense, episodic romantic relationship that lasted until Rilke's death from leukemia in 1926.
Klossowska helped Rilke establish his residence in Muzot, Switzerland, finding and directing the renovations for him of the Château de Muzot. Her sons developed close relationships with Rilke, and Balthasar—the future Balthus—published his first book of watercolors about a lost cat, Mitsou, with text by Rilke, during this period.
In 1922, Rilke wrote, in what he called "a savage creative storm," his two most important collections of poetry, the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, both published in 1923. Klossowska, who gave Rilke a Christmas gift of Ovid's Metamorphisis in 1920 (a French translation which included the episodes of the Orpheus cycle) and a postcard image of Orpheus, is generally understood to have crystallized the ideas that enabled him to see this cycle in a form appropriate to his poetic voice.
During their romance, Rilke called Klossowska by the pet name "Merline" (a female "Merlin," or "sorceress") in their correspondence—first published in 1954.{{Cite book |last1=Rilke |first1=Rainer Maria |author-link=Rainer Maria Rilke |title=Correspondence 1920–1926 |last2=Klossowska |first2=Baladine |publisher=Éditions M. Niehans |year=1954 |location=Zürich |language=de |oclc=24094277}}{{Cite book |last=Rilke |first=Rainer Maria |author-link=Rainer Maria Rilke |title=Letters to Merline, 1919–1922 |publisher=Paragon House |others=Translated by Jesse Browner |year=1989 |isbn=9781557781154 |location=St. Paul, MN |language=en |oclc=17547069}} Rilke fans are divided in their opinions as to whether she was a positive or negative force on his life and writing, and Klossowska's reputation has been largely defined by whether or not Rilke's critics found her influence sympathetic.
= Final years in France =
Klossowska lived in Paris at 69 rue de la Glacière in her final years. She died at the home of her son Pierre, in Bagneux, Hauts-de-Seine.{{Citation |title=Baladine Klossowska |date=12 February 2021 |url=https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Baladine_Klossowska&oldid=179845654 |work=Wikipédia |language=fr |access-date=5 May 2022}}
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [http://picture-poems.com/rilke/klossowska-sketch_1925.html Klossowska's 1925 sketch of Rilke]
- [http://www.askart.com/askart/artist.aspx?artist=11001230 Eugen Spiro's portrait of his sister]
{{Authority control (arts)}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Klossowska, Baladine}}
Category:20th-century French painters
Category:20th-century French women artists
Category:Jewish women painters
Category:Emigrants from the German Empire to France
Category:French people of German-Jewish descent
Category:French people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent
Category:19th-century German Jews
Category:Artists from the Province of Silesia