Paris-born Balthus Klossowski de Rola (1908-2001) is considered by some to be comparable to Picasso, though it was Picasso who said that Balthus was the "last great painter of the 20th century." From Picasso's Cubism onward, painting no longer needed to mirror the world "as seen." Balthus, by contrast, was a classic Realist with an occasional Surrealist twinge.

At "Balthus" at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, graphic Expressionism is evident in "Balthus and Mitsou" (1916), a series of ink drawings about the artist's travels with a cat. These were published in 1921 by his mother's lover, the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Cats were Balthus' cherished pets and subject matter, discerned in "The King of Cats" (1935), though the artist recalled that the name referred not to himself but to the character Tybalt in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet."

In 1926, Balthus went to Arezzo, Italy, to study the work of Renaissance master Piero della Francesca (1415-1492), namely his "The Legend of the True Cross," an elaborate tale about the crucifixion cross. The detachment between Piero's figure groupings, and their supposed refusal to engage one another, became an indisputable influence upon Balthus, and the remnants of this debt is played out in his paintings through the 1930s and beyond.