- 6
Nicolas de Staël
Estimate
700,000 - 1,000,000 EUR
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Description
- Nicolas de Staël
- Pot à raies
- oil on canvas
- 130 x 89 cm; 51 3/16 x 35 1/16 in.
- Executed in 1953.
Provenance
Private collection, Paris
Literature
Art de France, no.1, 1961, illustrated in colour
Jacques Dubourg and Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël, Paris, 1968, p. 289, no. 668, illustrated
Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël, Catalogue Raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Neuchâtel, 1997, p. 463, no. 698, illustrated
Exh.Cat, Nicolas de Staeël en Provence, Aix-en-Provence, Hôtel de Caumont, Paris, 2018, p.173, illustrated in colour
Jacques Dubourg and Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël, Paris, 1968, p. 289, no. 668, illustrated
Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël, Catalogue Raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Neuchâtel, 1997, p. 463, no. 698, illustrated
Exh.Cat, Nicolas de Staeël en Provence, Aix-en-Provence, Hôtel de Caumont, Paris, 2018, p.173, illustrated in colour
Condition
The colours are fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration although it does not convey the rich relief and the multiple layerers of paint.
The work is executed on its original canvas and is not relined.
The lower left and right corner present faint wear marks. As visible in the catalogue illustration, there are some stabilized cracks located in the blue and white areas of the vase.
Under UV light inspection, there is no evidence of restoration.
This work is in very good composition.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
Catalogue Note
Caption: Pot à raies dans l'atelier de Nicolas de Staël au Castelet à Ménerbes, 1961 © Revue Art de France © ADAGP, Paris 2018
Caption: Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta, 1949 © ADAGP, Paris 2018
"One never paints what one sees or thinks one sees, one paints with a thousand vibrations the blow received, or to be received, and how can one cry without anger a head in one hand and a platform in the other" Nicolas de Stael wrote to his friend the poet Pierre Lecuire on the 3rd December 1949. This blow received, this muffled cry are unquestionably perceivable in this dazzling canvas painted four years later. Such power, such exaltation in the incandescent reds and the interstitial sedimentation which makes the contours vibrate! With its haunting palette, its chromatic dissonance and its dense and compact surface, Pot à raies admirably translates the devouring passion that animated Nicolas de Staël at the turn of the 1950s and more particularly in 1953 when he discovered Agrigento, Selinunte, Syracuse, and Fiesole. After this trip to Italy, his painting changed forever. It was already powerful; it became exhilarating, extraordinarily frontal and organic, the matter crystallizing beneath the knife strokes, letting through a daring convolution of colour here and there.
Beyond its undeniable plastic beauty, Pot à raies also reveals Nicolas de Staël's artistic practice. The gestures which are both rigorous and unbridled convey all the ambiguity of his unique stance which made him an artist beyond category, who brought a new sense to modernity and took the risk of opening up new, unexplored paths. In contemplating this painting, the spectator can only question the nature of what he is looking at. Is it a relatively traditional still-life, illustrating a vase placed on a wild rose tablecloth, contrasted against a scarlet red wall? Or an abstract composition of almost geometrical construction? Is the artist sublimating the real or is he painting an incandescent world which only he can perceive.
Nicolas de Staël's work is located on the convergence between dream and reality. He may well have hammered home "always, there is always a subject", he took the opposite path to the one taken by Mondrian and Kandinsky a few decades earlier. As Jean-Louis Prat explains in his introduction in the catalogue of the artist's retrospective exhibition at the Fondation Gianadda in 2010, his work tirelessly tackles "the problem that haunted creators of the 20th century between the painting of subject and that of ideas." Always refusing an association with the School of Paris and other abstract painters of his time, Staël played with codes and moved towards the sublime, creating a canvas "fragile like love" according to the expression of the art critic Stuart Preston who studied the works from these years and refused in turn a figurative interpretation.
Quote
"All my life, I had a need to think painting, to paint in order to liberate myself from all the impressions, all the feelings, and all the anxieties of which the only solution I know is painting."
Nicolas de Staël, Paris, March 1953 (before his trip to Syracuse and Agrigento in Sicily)
Caption: Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta, 1949 © ADAGP, Paris 2018
"One never paints what one sees or thinks one sees, one paints with a thousand vibrations the blow received, or to be received, and how can one cry without anger a head in one hand and a platform in the other" Nicolas de Stael wrote to his friend the poet Pierre Lecuire on the 3rd December 1949. This blow received, this muffled cry are unquestionably perceivable in this dazzling canvas painted four years later. Such power, such exaltation in the incandescent reds and the interstitial sedimentation which makes the contours vibrate! With its haunting palette, its chromatic dissonance and its dense and compact surface, Pot à raies admirably translates the devouring passion that animated Nicolas de Staël at the turn of the 1950s and more particularly in 1953 when he discovered Agrigento, Selinunte, Syracuse, and Fiesole. After this trip to Italy, his painting changed forever. It was already powerful; it became exhilarating, extraordinarily frontal and organic, the matter crystallizing beneath the knife strokes, letting through a daring convolution of colour here and there.
Beyond its undeniable plastic beauty, Pot à raies also reveals Nicolas de Staël's artistic practice. The gestures which are both rigorous and unbridled convey all the ambiguity of his unique stance which made him an artist beyond category, who brought a new sense to modernity and took the risk of opening up new, unexplored paths. In contemplating this painting, the spectator can only question the nature of what he is looking at. Is it a relatively traditional still-life, illustrating a vase placed on a wild rose tablecloth, contrasted against a scarlet red wall? Or an abstract composition of almost geometrical construction? Is the artist sublimating the real or is he painting an incandescent world which only he can perceive.
Nicolas de Staël's work is located on the convergence between dream and reality. He may well have hammered home "always, there is always a subject", he took the opposite path to the one taken by Mondrian and Kandinsky a few decades earlier. As Jean-Louis Prat explains in his introduction in the catalogue of the artist's retrospective exhibition at the Fondation Gianadda in 2010, his work tirelessly tackles "the problem that haunted creators of the 20th century between the painting of subject and that of ideas." Always refusing an association with the School of Paris and other abstract painters of his time, Staël played with codes and moved towards the sublime, creating a canvas "fragile like love" according to the expression of the art critic Stuart Preston who studied the works from these years and refused in turn a figurative interpretation.
Quote
"All my life, I had a need to think painting, to paint in order to liberate myself from all the impressions, all the feelings, and all the anxieties of which the only solution I know is painting."
Nicolas de Staël, Paris, March 1953 (before his trip to Syracuse and Agrigento in Sicily)