Nicolas De Staël

Biography of Nicolas De Staël

Nicolas de Staël von Holstein was born into a Russian aristocratic family on January 5, 1914.

It was the Russian Revolution that marked the first major turning point in his life in 1917. In less than a year, he left his country and became an orphan of both father and mother. After a stint in Poland, he settled in Brussels under the care of his guardian. Painting was the only path that this proud and determined young man wanted to follow. His meeting in 1938 with Jeannine Guillou, who became his companion, was decisive on the long path of his pictorial maturity.

Highly influenced by Léger and a great admirer of Georges Braque, De Staël was initially a figurative painter who gradually turned to abstraction to finally devote all his energy to it.

This work was first recognized and praised in 1944 when he exhibited under the auspices of Jeanne Bucher alongside a Russian master of abstraction, Wassily Kandinsky.
But the post-war period was difficult for De Staël. He sold little, and he had the terrible pain of losing the love of his life, Jeannine, who passed away in February 1946.

In 1951, one of his most faithful admirers and friends, René Char, entrusted him with the illustration of his book "Poèmes".

Gradually abandoning (but without a real break) abstraction to return to figuration, De Staël reached the maturity of his art, and international success finally came. France, of course, but also England and the United States (in 1953) recognized the extent of the talent and the singularity of this artist emblematic of a certain quest, both pictorial and emotional, since De Staël's painting, even abstract, is to be classified in expressionism.

From September 1954, De Staël separated from his family and settled in Antibes, where he worked tirelessly: still lifes, landscapes, seascapes... His production was exponential, but proportionate to his anguish.

On March 16, 1955, while working on a monumental canvas, "Le Concert," in a room specially provided for him at the Fort of Antibes, De Staël committed suicide by throwing himself out of the window. He was 41 years old and left behind over 1000 paintings.

(c) Natacha PELLETIER for PASSION ESTAMPES