Nicolas de Stael

The artist

Thence by descent to the present owner

Arles, Musée Réattu, Nicolas de Staël, 1958, no. 45

Grenoble, Musée de Peinture et de Sculpture, Nicolas de Staël, Peintures et Dessins, 1984, illustrated

Montpellier, Château d'O, Nicolas de Staël autour de l'atelier de Ménerbes, 1992, p. 39, illustrated in colour

Parma, Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Mamiano di Traversetolo, Nicolas de Staël, Retrospective, 1994, no. 43, illustrated in colour

Oslo, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, A Precarious Balance, 1997

Jacques Dubourg and Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël: Catalogue Raisonné des Peintures, Paris 1968, p. 301, no. 710, illustrated

Daniel Dobbels, Staël, Paris 1994, no. 64, illustrated in colour

Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël: Catalogue Raisonné de L'Oeuvre Peint, Neuchâtel 1997, p. 478, no. 726, illustrated in colour

"Staël will surely be counted as one of the most influential painters of his generation. He stands out by reason of his adoption of a monumental style, his use of impasto and his solid yet refined blocks of colour: and he had also the courage to embrace a tradition when he deemed it necessary … His last paintings show that he was on the verge of yet another departure: he had achieved brilliant luminosity, the ‘clarté’ that he loved and so fervently sought. But the pressures were too great: the impulses too strong. He was meteoric and titanic: his grandly optimistic painting stands strong and bold in the middle of our fluctuating age. It enjoys the same positive character that he had as a man: it has the quality of life enhancement.” (Denys Sutton in Exhibition Catalogue, Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais; London, Tate Gallery, Nicolas de Staël, 1981, p. 15)

With a dramatic diagonal pulsing through the heart of its composition, Figure Acoudée represents one of Nicolas de Staël’s largest and most dynamic renditions of that most classical of subjects, the reclining nude. Throughout history, many artists have attempted to tackle the ultimate artistic form and in a very small group of works on this large scale, Nicolas de Staël took on this tradition. However, de Staël was not interested so much in the scholarly rendering of the figure but more in the composition of the space. Exploring the tension between the densities of the solid figure and the indefinable space which surrounds it, de Staël sought to once again expose the proximity between abstraction and figuration. In his hands, the model and her surroundings became the vehicles for a search for the perfection of form and colour which could elevate painting to the level of the sublime. Ever since Manet had begun to challenge the boundaries of life painting with Olympia in 1863 (see Fig. 1), artists had been trying to articulate their own experience of the reclining nude in the 20^th century and although this series by de Staël is relatively small, no history of this theme is complete without one of these works. Due to their importance and rarity, most of these works are now in public collections and, in fact, Figure Acoudée is being sold by the family of the artist having remained in their hands for the last half century.

Although he had always seen himself as an individual painter who was not attached to any particular movement or place, de Staël was generally acknowledged as one of the leading lights of the so-called Ecole de Paris movement of abstract artists. In the wake of the horrors of reality which had been witnessed during World War II, these artists sought refuge in the evocation of pure, unadulterated form and colour on canvas, as a kind of European answer to Abstract Expressionism. However, following his trip to the United States in 1953 for his exhibition at Knoedler & Co., and further exposure to a whole range of cultures from all eras during a number of trips that same year, de Staël’s art began to re-introduce aspects of figuration. Having spent most of the 1940s searching for an intangible purity in his abstraction, de Staël spent the early part of the 1950s trying to re-establish a figurative basis for his work. As he commented, “I do not set up abstract painting in opposition to figurative. A figurative painting should be both … abstract to the extent that it is a flat surface, figurative to the extent that it is a representation of space.” (Nicolas de Staël in R.V. Gindertael, Nicolas de Staël, Basel 1966, n.p.) Unfortunately, in an attempt to reconcile the advances of abstraction with other great traditions of figurative art in the European canon, in 1954 de Staël found himself alienated by the avant-garde critics for his “return to figuration” at his first major show in Paris in three years.

Fortunately enough, time has healed that particular criticism and viewed in the light of the pre-dominance of the figurative and the gradual fragmentation of a distinct ‘style’ in Post-Modern painting, this body of work is now regarded as one of the most important in his oeuvre. In a painting such as Figure Acoudée, de Staël is committing lived experience to a history of abstraction in a dialogue of new order with reality. Here, adopting traditional composition ideals, de Staël used a palette knife to create layer after layer of colour, building a chromatic basis from which the figurative space can begin to develop. Reminiscent of Matisse’s planar building of shapes and colour, de Staël takes this one stage further by allowing histories of colour to develop beneath the surface of each expansive plane and at each convergent axis.

The figure itself is marked out by bold gestural swathes which sweep across the body. A thick block of sky blue marks out the arm, whilst various intensities of white animate the leg. One can almost sense de Staël’s presence in the pure gestures which he has made. Sitting flat with the other colour planes yet somehow also emerging out of their volume, this breathtaking painting refuses to define its subject or stick to convention. What is critical here is the way that de Staël uses the lightly brushed grey veils to anchor the figure. The thick impasto of the underlying colour glows through these semi-opaque veils to reveal a unique compositional depth. As Pierre Lecuire explained in 1953: “His greys. There would be no light in the paintings, no atmosphere, no transparency … if it were not for the famous greys. These greys are quite unique in the painting of today; unique in their refinement and variety, unique in substance and depth, and unique also in the multiple ways the painter combines them.” (in: Exhibition Catalogue, Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais; London, Tate Gallery, Nicolas de Staël, 1981, p. 171). Intriguingly hidden beneath these greys, another narrative may be emerging within this painting adding an extra dimension rarely seen in de Staël's work. It appears that another figure lies at a perpendicular angle to the central subject and the two are involved in an embrace. Gently and tenderly cradling each other in their arms, this apparent fragility and emotion is countered by the strength and power of the lines which create their abstract form. In addition a dramatic storm seems to be brewing in the grey planes behind them. 

It was with such paintings that de Staël led the way, showing his contemporaries the possibilities of abstract art and it was during this period, the last two years of his life, that he made true breakthroughs for painting. Yet, whilst the quality of his innovation increased, with it came the burden of being the standard bearer. Having finally broken into the American market with his exhibition at Knoedler in 1953 and his subsequent attachment to Paul Rosenberg, the pressure of international success began to take its toll. As he pushed himself further and further, de Staël became increasingly isolated and frustrated with his ideas. Driven by a highly intense artistic vision which was ahead of his contemporaries, de Staël’s endless quest for abstract perfection eventually drove him over the edge. On 16^th March 1955, at the age of just 44 and during the peak of his career, de Staël tragically took his own life. During his relatively short artistic life, paintings such as Figure Acoudée made him one of the key figures in 20^th century painting.