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| Nicolas de Staël in his studio, 1954 (c) Denise Colomb |
You can hardly imagine my excitement when I realized that I would be in Aix-en-Provence this summer in time to see an exhibition devoted to one of my favorite artists, Nicolas de Staël. What good fortune! The exhibit, aptly titled "Nicolas de Staël in Provence", will show eighty of his paintings and drawings. All of them date from the period between July 1953 and October 1954. This is regarded as one of the most important periods of de Staël's career--and it's my personal favorite.
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| "Menerbes" Oil on Canvas, 16 x 22 cm Nicolas de Staël, 1953 |
De Staël was born into an aristocratic Russian family in 1914. In fact, at age two, he was already a page at the Court of Emperor Nicolas II. One year later the Russian Revolution forced his family to flee to Poland. The details of his biography are fascinating, but too long to explore in this post--you can learn more here.
Due to various twists of fate, de Staël remains unknown to most people, especially in the US. But as Michael Klein (a NY art dealer and curator) has written, "For many painters, he is just this side of a minor saint." De Staël's work is often characterized as abstract, but de Staël himself resisted that classification. He insisted that there was always a subject. Like Richard Diebenkorn, he evolved away from an early period of more abstract painting, and came to paint real "things". I have read that sometimes de Staël even took his gear out on location and painted en plein air.
After a rather nomadic life, de Staël was ultimately drawn the the warmth of the South of France. He bought a house in Menerbes, a small hill town in Provence. (Menerbes is the subject of the first painting above). It is the work done here that will be featured in the exhibition in Aix this summer. I love these paintings! When he moved to Menerbes, de Staël had just returned from a trip through Italy, where he was particularly taken with Sicily. He wrote about evenings with yellow skies, red seas and violet sands. Back home, de Staël worked furiously to recreate these amazing landscapes. He worked from memory and from notes taken on the trip.
De Staël created these landscapes by applying thick slabs of brilliant colors. He used a strong vanishing point to hold all the shapes in place. He was a master at capturing the essence of a vista using simple shapes of color. Some might call these works "abstract",. But I see in each of them a particular landscape, portrayed very believably, yet without detail. Here's what one critic, Brett Baker, wrote about de Staël's painting "Agrigente" (pictured just above):
"Agrigente...initially appears to be an abstract painting loosely influenced by landscape. This painting changes, however, before your eyes into a carefully observed, specific view. The unreproducible orange of the sky doesn’t hold a spatial plane the way it would in an abstract painting - as a wedge of space - rather it conveys the infinite, and does so as convincingly as any blue ever has. The same orange, cut with nearly imperceptible additions of red, holds both discrete middle and foreground spaces in the picture. In this painting, de Staël’s color is not color, it is light and heat as they travel across space. The effect can only be experienced in person."
If you too want to experience the works in person, here's the scoop. Of course, I don't know exactly which paintings will be included in the show. I hope that some of the ones pictured in this post will be there--several of them are from private collections. I am always excited to see works from a private collection, because they are available to the public only for a rare glimpse. Closer to home, the Bechtler Museum in Charlotte has a de Staël painting, and the Philips Collection in Washington, DC, has a number of them. For the time being, we can enjoy these images online. And see more of my thoughts on de Staël here. Thanks!
Due to various twists of fate, de Staël remains unknown to most people, especially in the US. But as Michael Klein (a NY art dealer and curator) has written, "For many painters, he is just this side of a minor saint." De Staël's work is often characterized as abstract, but de Staël himself resisted that classification. He insisted that there was always a subject. Like Richard Diebenkorn, he evolved away from an early period of more abstract painting, and came to paint real "things". I have read that sometimes de Staël even took his gear out on location and painted en plein air.
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| "La Route" Oil on Canvas, 65 x 81 cm. Nicolas de Staël, 1954 |
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| "Agrigente" Oil on Canvas, 35 x 51 1/2 inches Nicolas de Staël, 1953 |
De Staël created these landscapes by applying thick slabs of brilliant colors. He used a strong vanishing point to hold all the shapes in place. He was a master at capturing the essence of a vista using simple shapes of color. Some might call these works "abstract",. But I see in each of them a particular landscape, portrayed very believably, yet without detail. Here's what one critic, Brett Baker, wrote about de Staël's painting "Agrigente" (pictured just above):
"Agrigente...initially appears to be an abstract painting loosely influenced by landscape. This painting changes, however, before your eyes into a carefully observed, specific view. The unreproducible orange of the sky doesn’t hold a spatial plane the way it would in an abstract painting - as a wedge of space - rather it conveys the infinite, and does so as convincingly as any blue ever has. The same orange, cut with nearly imperceptible additions of red, holds both discrete middle and foreground spaces in the picture. In this painting, de Staël’s color is not color, it is light and heat as they travel across space. The effect can only be experienced in person."
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| "Sicile (Vue d'Agrigente) Oil on canvas, 114 x 146 cm Nicolas de Stael, 1954 |
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| "Soleil" Oil on Canvas, 16 x 24 cm Nicolas de Staël, 1954 |
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