Setsuko Klossowska de Rola

Setsuko Klossowska de Rola, born Setsuko Ideta in Tokyo in 1942, is a Japanese painter closely linked to Balthus, with whom she shared much of her life. Her name is associated both with her own painting and with the promotion of her husband's work, placing her at the meeting point of contemporary Japanese art and the European figurative tradition.

She studied French at Sophia University in Tokyo, where she met Balthus, who was visiting Japan for the first time in 1962. They married in 1967, and she lived with him at the Villa Medici in Rome, seat of the French Academy, which he directed. In 1977 they moved to Le Grand Chalet in Rossinière, Switzerland, where she still lives. Her work has been exhibited in Rome, New York, Paris, London and Tokyo.

After Balthus died in 2001, she founded the Balthus Foundation, and in 2005 she was named UNESCO Artist for Peace. She also collaborates with the French ceramics maker Astier de Villatte, whose Paris workshop houses her studio.