Nicolas de Staël: Human… too human

Nicolas de Staël: Human… too human

[26 Sep 2023]

"What I'm attempting is a continuous renewal, truly continuous, and it's not easy. I know what my painting really is behind its appearance, its violence, its perpetual trials of strength, it's a fragile thing in the sense of the good, the sublime. It's as fragile as love." Nicolas de Staël, 1954

Every twenty years or so Nicolas DE STAËL (1914-1955)'s work seems to re-emerge at the forefront of the international art scene. The Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris (MAM) has just openeda new exhibition ofthe artist's work that will run until 21 January 2024.The last major retrospective of his work was hosted by the Pompidou Center in 2003. Before that, his work was shown at the Pierre Gianadda Foundation in Martigny in 1995, and before that, at the Grand Palais in 1981. Back in1955, an exhibition he was still working on at the time of his suicide was touredacross the United States. French museums ultimately have very few paintings by the painter on their walls. The latest show in Paris contains around 200 works (paintings, drawings, engravings and notebooks), a majority of which have never been shownin France before. Curators Charlotte Barat-Mabille and Pierre Wat have chosen a chronological presentation that highlights early works often eclipsed by later works and takes us through his multiple fast-living and fiery adventures in various countries which all contributed to the constitution of his repertoire of colorand anincessant formal research between abstraction and figurative representation with continually renewed approaches to light, texture and composition. The exhibition presents an œuvre that isboth dense and constantly changing: each of the 11 rooms seems present a new period. The heavycatalog also highlights the artist's restless quest and contains interviews with people who were close to him. Anne de Staël, his eldest daughter, and Pierre LECUIRE, his faithful friend, poignantly describethe visual journey the painter embarked on. "Brutal painting" (P. Lecuire)

Nicolas de Staël entered the world with the seeds of an extraordinary destiny. Born in Saint Petersburginto an age-oldlineage of German nobility, he spent his childhood in the severe environment of the Peter and Paul Fortress of which his father was vice-governor. But the revolution of 1917 forced the whole family into exile, and the childwho was originally destined to become a page of the Tsar found himself an orphan at 6 years old, first in Poland then inBelgium. Irresistibly attracted to art, he opposedhis adoptive parents and wenton trips where his eyes absorbedand his hands created and also, often, subsequently destroyed. Handsome and charismatic at the same time, he did notgo unnoticed. Jeannine GUILLOU (1909-1946), also a painter, whom he met in Morocco in 1938, left her husband for him. When France entered the war in 1939, he joined the Foreign Legion. After demobilization he began to establish a network of artist friends and gallery owners, including Jeanne Bucher and Jacques Dubourg.

Jeannine Guillou hireda student, Pierre Lecuire,to teach her son Antek. Lecuirewas deeply marked by his years working closely with the artist, andcompiled his impressions in a Journal of the Staël years. The journalhelps us to understand the impact of Staël's first abstract paintings which he describes poetically as "so sensual in color, painted with anger, mysticism and frustration, sometimes carnal with intense reds, other times muted with grays, somber greens and browns. There are narrow and tight circles but there are also mystical drawings that radiatelike a harbor lit by spotlights, with God falling from the sky, or the night round of dark atoms." Thevery rich decade 1938-1947 remains largely eclipsed both in museums and on the auction market. A Composition from 1947, sold in May 2012 at Sotheby's Paris, is the only one from this period to have crossed the $1 million threshold (way above itshigh estimate of nearly $500,000). According to Pierre Lecuire, de Staël's life was all about art, occupying all hisspace, everywhere, all the time. Constantly pushing his painting to its limits, the artist torturedhimself and struggled througha catastrophic financial situation. He lived the archetypal "cursed painter" lifeuntil his suicide at the age of 41, just after signing an exclusive contract with Paul Rosenberg, the famous New York art dealer, that would at lasthave givenhim notoriety and material comfort.

The studio as refuge

"Make it always stronger, more acute, more refined, always more absolute, with, at the end, the idea of the supreme masterpiece thatwould consist of a line and a void".

After the sudden death of Jeannine Guillou in 1946, Nicolas de Staël married Françoise Chapouton, who assumed responsibility for their daily lives with the children. As a result, the artist had complete freedom to devote himself to painting. His daughter Anne describes her father's places of creationin splendid detail; noeasel, the canvases -often very large formats -were placeddirectly on the floor. She remembers the tall figure sometimes curled up on a small armchair, then suddenly standing up to add material with a palette knife to several canvases at the same time and almost in the same gesture. Like an orchestra conductor who alternately or simultaneously summons the instruments that set his personal symphony to music.

Nicolas de Staël didnot paint from nature, nor outdoors. He wasconstantly moving, following his personal quest, traveling, absorbing and working on the material until it capturedhis inner landscape. The hypersensitive painter who saidhe was "embarrassed to paint a similar object", was nevertheless careful not to take sides in debates that raged about abstract or figurative art: "I do not oppose abstract painting to figurative painting. A painting should be both abstract and figurative: abstract likea wall…figurative likea representation of a space." (1952). It wastherefore space that mattered to him, and above all- like MATISSE, KANDINSKYand MONDRIAAN - color space. De Staël'snotorietyand auction marketare highly focused on the last few years of his life. The rediscovered horizons of Sicilianlandscapes, the speciallight of Provence, the effervescence of the Parc des Princes… everything captivated de Staël and everything inspiredhim. Collectors are particularly fond of his brighter works and hislarge formats depictingfootballers. The artist has nearly 80 auction results above the $1 million threshold to his name, mainly post-1950 works ina market that remains predominantly French, with notable exceptionsin the United States

But the MAM's latest exhibition reminds us that it would be wrong to focus only on the apparently 'tragic' aspects of de Staël's life by refocusing our attention on the artistic research of a man who painted for a living and showed himself incapable of painting to order. In the coming years, the art market could therefore be inclined to rediscover the works of his early years, which are as important to art history as those of his latter years.

Didhe believe his own words when he confidedto his stepson Antek a few days before his death, "You know, I don't know ifI'm going to live long. I think I've painted enough. I achieved what I wanted"? The third love of his life, Jeanne Polge, refusedto leave everything for him. On 16March1955, Nicolas de Staël threw himself from the terrace of his studio, leaving his largest canvas unfinished, The concert(Picasso museum, Antibes). Againsta burning red, ablack piano and a yellow double-bass…now reduced to silence.