Acquavella Indicators Harumi Klossowska de Rola, Daughter of Balthus

Acquavella Galleries, a gallery recognized for its blue-chip secondary market dealings, is taking unique US illustration of Harumi Klossowska de Rola, a Swiss sculptor whose observe sits between fantastic artwork and design. She is the daughter of Balthus, one of many final century’s most enigmatic painters, and the Japanese ceramicist Setsuko Klossowska de Rola.

Harumi’s animals—bronze owls, alabaster doves, life-size polar bears and stags—are forged in small editions after which obsessively reworked by hand, her patinas as rigorously thought of as their kinds. “She works diligently on each bit after casting, in order that whenever you see them in individual they really feel instantly timeless,” Alexander Acquavella mentioned. 

Costs begin below $100,000 for smaller works and climb previous half 1,000,000 for monumental bronzes, a variety that has already discovered traction with each new collectors and main gamers.

The match between artist and gallery will not be as unlikely as it’d first appear. Acquavella turned acquainted with Klossowska de Rola’s work on the Palm Seaside residence of Peter Brant, a longtime supporter. Acquavella mentioned Harumi’s observe exists inside an art-and-design continuum that additionally contains figures like Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, whose work has proven attraction amongst collectors in a number of industries.

“We’ve clearly had sculpture exhibits earlier than,” he mentioned of his gallery’s program, “however not an artist that falls between sculpture and design. We have been actually interested in the class she accomplishes—it’s not a straightforward factor to drag off.”

The artist herself describes her work as a dialogue with delusion and nature, rooted in her upbringing within the Swiss Alps. Her influences attain from Historic Egypt to Japanese Shintoism, filtered by the wabi-sabi aesthetic. She collaborates with artisans on the Fonderie de Coubertin exterior Paris, layering metals with age and gold leaf to realize surfaces that seem each historical and alive.

Her first present with Acquavella opened earlier this yr in Palm Seaside and was accompanied by a Rizzoli e book. This fall, new works will seem on the gallery’s sales space at Artwork Basel Paris, adopted by a significant solo exhibition throughout each flooring of Acquavella’s New York house in 2026.

For a gallery higher recognized for Giacometti and Cézanne, the transfer is greater than a nod to the market’s urge for food for crossover objects. It means that even establishments constructed on historical past are in search of artists who complicate gathering classes. “Her sculptures have a top quality that defies straightforward categorization,” Acquavella mentioned. “That’s what makes them particular.”