French-German painter count Balthasar Klossowski de Rola (1908-2001), known as Balthus, shocked the Parisian art world in 1934 with his dreamy, sensual, neo-classical portraits of nymphets at a time when surrealism and abstraction were de rigueur. as a provocateur, Balthus was often scorned; as an artist, he was widely embraced as a prodigy. in response to critics of his realist style, Balthus said: ""The real isn't what you think you see. one can be a realist of the unreal and a figurative painter of the invisible."" His erotic, poetic paintings live on as examples of the best figurative work of the modern era.

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