Skarstedt Paris is pleased to announce the exhibition Nicolas de Staël: Lignes de force. Éclats de lumière (1945-1949), on view from June 5 to July 20, 2024. Featuring sixteen important paintings from this period, the exhibition highlights the turning point that marked the beginning of Staël's artistic maturity. While it has often been overshadowed by the vibrant palettes of the 1950s, the period from 1945 to 1949 represents a fertile creative moment in the artist's career. The aim of this exhibition is to highlight the fundamental importance of these years in understanding the resulting body of work. At a time when abstraction was at the center of artistic debate, Staël set himself apart from the art scene still strongly influenced by the modern masters Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Léger, freely blurring the boundaries between abstraction and figuration. As evidenced by his first exhibition Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger in 1944, alongside Domela, Kandinsky and Magnelli, Staël set himself apart from his contemporaries through his velvety palette; dark, dramatic compositions; and use of tangled forms interrupted here and there by bursts of light from deep within the canvas, like stained-glass windows.
Born in St. Petersburg in 1914 into a noble military family close to the Tsar, Nicolas de Staël was orphaned at the age of eight, losing first his father and then his mother within a year of each other. He was taken in by the Fricero family in Uccle (Brussels), and later studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Saint-Gilles-Les-Bruxelles. The 1930s were marked by travels between southern France, Spain, Italy and Morocco, where he met his future wife, Jeannine Guillou. His travels continued until 1940, when, after a brief career as an officer, Nicolas de Staël returned to painting.
During the Occupation, the family split between Nice and Paris, where Staël settled permanently in 1943, working hard in his small temporary studio. His wife Jeannine and their two children soon left Nice to join him. Around this time, he met Jeanne Bucher, who provided them with lodgings in Vieira da Silva's studio, before they moved to a private mansion on rue Nollet rented by Pierre Chareau. The materiality of his pictures, sometimes painted on sheet canvas due to the severe scarcity, is imbued with both the harshness of the times and his extreme sensitivity. In 1944, Paris was liberated, and Staël took part in the Salon d'Automne. In December of that year, his friend and influence Kandinsky dies—Staël was one of the people to carry his coffin.
From 1945 onwards, Nicolas de Staël’s paintings are characterized by an assembly of geometric shapes, sometimes straight, sometimes curved, with edges that collide with one another. The painter erects improbably balanced constructions in the foreground, pierced by interstices of light from a deep background. In Composition, 1945-1946, Staël clearly distinguishes the foreground assembly of lines, polygons, arabesque shapes and “sticks” from the plain, dark background. His palette is dominated by muted browns, greens and grays, accentuating the sensation of impenetrable tumult that grips the viewer. In February 1946, Jeannine, already ill, succumbed to a medical abortion, leaving the painter in unspeakable sadness. Staël’s works from these years reflect a fragile harmony, subject to violent movements that cause the different planes to clash. Casse Lumière (Composition noire et rouge), 1946, features an accumulation of forms that compose an asymmetrical, anarchic architecture representative of a style in full metamorphosis.
In 1947, his relationships with Parisian gallery owners began to bear fruit, and Staël signed a contract with Galerie Louis Carré. With his second wife, Françoise Chapouton, and their children, he moved into a spacious, light-filled studio on rue Gauguet in the 14th arrondissement, where he became close to his great friend Georges Braque. This studio enabled the painter to express himself on large-format canvases, while his palette gradually brightened. Beams of color burst forth from the material, reflecting a year full of hope for the Staël family, as evidenced by the dynamism of the painting entitled Éclats, 1947, and rightly so. In the same year, the painter met the dealer Théodore Schempp, a neighbor on rue Gauguet, who would take his work to the United States.
A unique, vibrant energy emanates from the works of the year that follows, reflecting the relentless work of their creator. In Un Conte, 1948, taut, opposing lines continue to divide space, but now give way to ochre, blue, red or chalky-white surfaces. The dark background is abandoned in favor of a greenish-brown one. A new period of experimentation began for the artist: his compositions became airier, and his surfaces more tactile, thanks to impastos of paint. Nicolas de Staël makes convincing use of the palette knife technique that would contribute to his success, bringing out the reds and greens that radiate from his paintings. Commenting on his exhibition alongside Lanskoy, Laurens, Braque and Adam at the Étiolles convent, the great critic Roger Van Gindertael wrote: “I don't think I'm being too hazardous in discovering in Nicolas de Staël’s work the most important event in art today since the Picasso case, and one of the facts determining the current raison d'être of painting.” (Journal des poètes, Brussels, May 1948). This was followed by the de Staël exhibition in Montevideo, for which his art historian friend Pierre Courthion wrote a preface, describing the artist's new-found greed for layers of paint in substance, superimposed in ever more complex compositions. His appetite for the sensitive world fueled his frenetic creativity, as evidenced by Harmonie grise, beige, taches rouge (composition), 1948. Exhibited in Montevideo, his sun-drenched forms give rise to others, rising up on the canvas in a mosaic of colored cobblestones that subtly herald the 1950s shift towards “tessellated paintings” and, later, a return to controlled figuration.
For the french version of this press release, please email paris@skarstedt.com.
