Lithography on thick Vellum paper by Nicolas de Staël Titled: Composition, 1949

Original limited edition fine art print by Nicolas de Staël. Titled: Composition from 1949.

Two color Lithograph on thick Vellum paper signed in pencil by the artist in lower right and numbered on lower left. One of an edition of 100 signed and numbered lithographs

Work is not framed

Dimension: Size: 11 x 16 cm

Reference Catalogue résonnée: Wolmant 90

Price: *CAD (Canadian Dollars)

Nicolas de STAËL (1914 – 1955)

Nicolas de Staël was born; Nikolai Vladimirovich Stael von Holstein. De Staël’s family was forced to emigrate to Poland in 1919 because of the Russian Revolution; both his father and stepmother died in Poland and the orphaned Nicolas de Staël was sent in 1922 with his older sister Marina to Brussels to live with a Russian family.

De Staël met Françoise Chapouton in the spring of 1946, and they married in May. In October 1946 thanks to his friendship with artist André Lanskoy (whom he met in 1944) de Staël made a contract with Louis Carré who agreed to buy all the paintings that he produced.

In 1947 he befriended his neighbor American private art dealer Theodore Schempp. De Stael’s new studio in Paris was very close to Georges Braque’s and the two painters became very close friends. In April 1947 his second daughter Laurence was born. In April 1948 his son Jerome was born, also that same year in Paris he began a long friendship with German artist Johnny Friedlaender.

His paintings began to attract attention worldwide.

In 1950 he had a one-man exhibition at the Galerie Jacques Dubourg in Paris and Schempp introduced de Stael’s paintings to New York, with a private exhibition at his Upper East Side apartment.

He had considerable success in the United States, and England in the early 1950s. In 1950 Leo Castelli organized a group exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York City that included him. In 1952, He had one-man exhibitions in London, Montevideo, and in Paris.

After returning to Paris, de Staël met visiting New York art dealer Paul Rosenberg who offered de Staël an exclusive contract.

Paul Rosenberg raised his prices and continually requested more paintings. The demand was so high for his planned spring 1954 exhibition, that Rosenberg requested an additional fifteen paintings.

His new paintings marked his departure from abstraction and a return to figuration, still-life and landscape. In the fall of 1954, he moved with his family to Antibes.

His paintings are tense, nervous, always on the edge of the razor, like the last paintings of Vincent van Gogh he joined in suicide.

Nicolas de Staël died at the age of 41, throwing himself from the terrace of the building where he had his apartment and one of his workshops in Antibes. He is buried in the Montrouge Cemetery.