(b Bucharest, 22 Jan 1895; d 1979). Romanian painter, illustrator, watercolourist, draughtsman and pastellist. She studied at the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest (1913–16) and had private lessons with the painters Eustatiu Stoenescu (b 1885) and Gheorghe Petrascu. Between 1919 and 1922 she studied in Paris at the Académies Julian and Ranson, and the Academia Pedro Correja d’Aranjò with Paul-Albert Laurens (b 1870), Othon Friesz, Maurice Denis, Paul Sérusier and Edouard Vuillard. During this period she showed works at the Salon des Artistes Français and the Salon d’Automne. In Romania between the World Wars she exhibited at the official Salon and with the groups New Art (Arta Noua) and the Association of Women Painters (Asociatia Femeilor Pictore). She was awarded prizes in Romania and abroad, for example at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, Paris, 1937. Her work included illustrations for books by Tudor Arghezi, Ion Minulescu and Radu Tudoran, and articles on art. She worked in a variety of media, including oil, watercolour, gouache and pen, and favoured pastel. She produced over 200 illustrations for Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (1945–7), and pastels inspired by the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and Charles Baudelaire. Balacescu made use of exuberant colours, sometimes in the spirit of Matisse, and her drawing, full of irony, had a deliberate air of naivety. She often depicted narrative subjects, displaying a rich fantasy with an acute sense of pictorial values. The theatre, exotic subjects and the painting of Henri Rousseau provided persistent inspiration.