Vente de tableaux et peintures de Nicolas de Staël

Nicolas de Staël is a major figure in 20th-century painting, renowned for having developed a body of work that straddles the boundary between figuration and abstraction. Born in Saint Petersburg in 1914 into a Russian aristocratic family, he fled the Revolution with his family and experienced exile at a very early age. After studying art in Belgium, he settled in France, where he gradually built up a personal body of work marked by a constant search for balance between form, colour and matter. His life, marked by precariousness and then intense creative activity, ended tragically in 1955.

His work is often compared to lyrical abstraction, although it differs from it in its strong structuring of forms. Influenced by Paul Cézanne in terms of construction, by Georges Braque and Cubism in terms of the fragmentation of space, and by Henri Matisse in terms of the use of colour, Nicolas de Staël developed a pictorial language made up of thick masses, interlocking planes and bold colours. He also engaged in an indirect dialogue with abstract expressionism, while remaining attached to motifs such as landscapes, still lifes, figures and sports scenes.

Living successively in Paris, Provence and on the Mediterranean coast, he painted a variety of subjects such as the ports of Marseille and Antibes, roads, hills, footballers and studio interiors. Unlike artists such as Jackson Pollock, he never completely abandoned the legibility of reality, preferring to condense forms to the point of recognition.

Today, Nicolas de Staël is considered one of the most important post-war painters in Europe. His work, both rigorous and free, continues to influence through its ability to bring together abstraction, landscape and the presence of the real world.