Initiation Amoureuse

Suzanne Ballivet's life and origins remain something of a mystery. Other than the fact that she probably lived and worked in Paris from about 1930 to 1955, few, if any, biographical facts are available.

Although she illustrated several erotic books, Les Chansons de Bilitis (1943), Les Aventures du roi Pausole (1947), Gamiani (date unknown), La Venus aux Fourrures (1954), it is without doubt Initiation Amoureuse (1943) which remains her most popular body of work.

The artist's stature as an erotic illustrator of that period, however, is in no doubt. Owing something of a debt to the curved limbs and blonde, bucolic innocence of Renoir's Baigneuses, Ballivet's depiction of the nymph-like Therese and her older husband on their summer honeymoon is a triumph of the genre. The subject of this initiation, the newlywed Therese, is so much a pouting Bardot prototype that one is led to suspect that the real date of Initiation Amoureuse is more like 1958! But as with many clandestinely produced works, the publication date may have been falsified to confuse and mislead the authorities...
    Ballivet is one of the few female artists known to have produced erotic work in the first half of this century. Leonor Fini, Gertrude Hermes, Clara Tice and Gerda Wegener constitute the rest of this elite company.