• About Arthur Balder

Artur Balder is an American multidisciplinary artist whose work spans sculpture, painting, filmmaking, and literature. As a filmmaker, he is known for American Mirror: Intimations of Immortality, starring Academy Award-winner Susan Sarandon. In that work, Balder develops a personal approach to cinematic poetics through a non-linear and visually driven exploration of memory, identity, and cultural experience. As a writer, Balder is the author of novels published in eight languages by major publishers including Random House, Edhasa, and Mondadori. He is best known for the Teutoburg Series, an extensive cycle of Roman historical fiction centered on Arminius and the wars between Rome and the Germanic tribes. The series is regarded as one of the most ambitious fictional treatments of Arminius and the Roman campaigns in Germania Magna. He also wrote the Chronicles of Widukind, a historical saga focused on the conflict between the Saxon leader Widukind and Charlemagne. The series includes The Codex of the Sword (2010), The Lords of Earth (2012), and The Spear of Destiny (2013). Balder is also the creator of documentary works dedicated to the history of Spanish immigration in New York. After moving to the United States in 2008 and settling in New York City, he expanded his artistic practice into directing and film production. This period led to works such as Little Spain and Tales of 14th Street, documentaries exploring the Spanish community in Manhattan and recovering archival material related to its cultural legacy. In Little Spain, Balder documented the overlooked history of the Spanish-American community around 14th Street in Manhattan. While living as a resident artist in the building of the Spanish Benevolent Society, he worked with archival material including photographs and historical documents that traced the evolution of the neighborhood throughout the twentieth century. The film is dedicated to Federico García Lorca and incorporates lines from Poet in New York. In 2013, his documentary Ciria Pronounced Thiria, premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was later presented at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. The film included interviews with prominent figures from the art world, including critic long-time friend and mentor Donald Kuspit and members of Gagosian Gallery. In 2015, MoMA premiere his art film 'The Reality of the Imaginary'. Balder is also the author of several children’s books published and distributed internationally in Spain and Latin America. Across literature, film, and visual art, his work is often shaped by history, memory, migration, and the relationship between artistic image and cultural identity. Between 2011 and 2014, Spanish artist Joan Castejon created more than 100 original drawings to illustrate the characters and landscapes of Balder's mythopoetic novel 'The Eye of Odin'.