Balthus's lifelong fascination with the dark side of childhood resulted in his most iconic works: canvases depicting girls on the brink of puberty, hovering between innocence and knowledge. Balthus: Cats and Girls focuses on the early decades of his career, from the mid-1930s to the 1950s. Sabine Rewald draws on her extensive (and firsthand) knowledge of the artist, as well as on interviews with the models themselves, to explore the origins and permutations of his obsession with depicting adolescents.