Focillon-Baltrusaitis: A Family History of Art

As the family is the initial learning environment, the Focillon-Baltrusaitis Collection provide an extremely important view of art history. Assembled over several generations, the objets d’art they contain tell the story of inheritances, friendships and travels, while conveying a specifically 20th-century vision of the world. Reflecting curious minds and a cosmopolitanism embracing France, Lithuania, the US and Russia, these collections were far from fossilized, and show us if not the "life of forms", at least a life with an intensely intellectual and artistic bent. Henri Focillon (1881-1943) always acknowledged that his thinking was influenced by the etching work of his father, Victor Focillon (1849-1918). Firstly because at the time, engraving—and especially interpretative engraving, well represented in the sale—was a way of circulating images and artworks, and thus fundamental to his later work as an art historian. And secondly because of its technique and gestures, which made a lasting impression on him. Henri Focillon considered it the special medium of "visionaries" like Piranesi, who was the subject of his thesis and who features in the catalog with a series of views of Rome and…