2023-09-06 12:42:03
The Paris Museum of Modern Art devotes a major retrospective to Nicolas de Stael and offers a new look at the artist’s work. Most of his work takes regarding fifteen years and his work is constantly renewed.
His practice as a painter is part of a post-war France where the dispute between partisans of abstraction and defenders of figuration rages. Indifferent to the quarrels of his time, Stael hates labels and refuses to choose, preferring to paint “without a priori aesthetics”. The result is a free and personal work, which manifests the always lively sensitivity of this painter vis-à-vis what surrounds him.
Interrupted by his suicide at the age of 41, the trajectory of Stael appears retrospectively as the pursuit, carried out in urgency, of an ever denser and more concise art. Facing the landscape or in the silence of the studio, his successive evolutions testify to a pictorial quest of rare intensity, the power of which, until today, remains intact.
The retrospective brings together a selection of around 200 paintings, drawings, engravings and notebooks from numerous public and private collections in Europe and the United States. Next to iconic masterpieces such as the Princes Parkit presents an important collection of works that are rarely, if ever, exhibited, including some fifty shown for the first time in a French museum.
Nicolas de Staël 1952 Parc des Princes Private collection – © ADAGP, Paris, 2023 Photo Christie’s
Organized chronologically, the exhibition traces the successive evolutions of the artist, from his first figurative steps and his dark and “material” canvases of the 1940s, to his paintings painted on the eve of his premature death in 1955.
► Rue Gauguet (1948-1949) : Stael designs several works at the same time, moving from oil to India ink, from canvas to paper. The obscure impulses of the previous canvases give way to a less violent, more organic way of painting. Gradually, his compositions loosen up: the dynamic and tangled beams give way to larger, more stable and ethereal forms.
Nicolas de Staël 1949 Gray composition Geneva, Gandur Foundation for Art – © ADAGP, Paris, 2023 © Gandur Foundation for Art, Geneva Photo Sandra Pointet
► Condensation (1950) : In 1950, the work of Stael becomes denser: more ample and collected masses are arranged on the surface of the canvas. From studies on paper to the painting in its final version, he multiplies the stages, works long and tirelessly on his compositions.
Nicolas de Staël Large blue composition 1950-1951 Private collection Courtesy Applicat-Prazan, Paris – © ADAGP, Paris, 2023 Courtesy Applicat-Prazan, Paris
► Fragmentation (1951) : The paintings of the year 1951 appear, retrospectively, as a reaction to those of the year 1950, Stael bringing into play the achievements of the previous year. After condensation, it will therefore be fragmentation.
Nicolas de Staël 1951 1952 Fugue Washington, The Phillips Collection – © ADAGP, Paris, 2023 The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Photo Walter Larrimore
► A Year in the Landscape (1952) : In 1952, the references to the sensitive world become explicit. Stael then broadens his visual field, leaving the studio to devote himself to the landscape and work in the open air, on the motif.
Nicolas de Staël 1952 Landscape Private collection Courtesy Applicat-Prazan Paris – © ADAGP Paris 2023 Courtesy Applicat Prazan Paris.
► The spectacle of the world (1952 – 1953) : The attraction of Nicolas de Stael for the landscape is prolonged in a fascination for all that constitutes the spectacle of the world. Between a concert, a ballet and a football match, there is no hierarchy, but so many opportunities to confront life as a game of colored and moving materials.
► The Southern Workshop (1953) : The painter, whose palette becomes dazzling like Provençal light, multiplies studio subjects: portrait of his daughter Anne, “naked in the clouds”, still lifes. The carnal intensity of the sensations experienced by this man is diffused in everything, even in the texture of a pink tablecloth placed on a table.
Nicolas de Staël 1953 Red tree Private collection – © ADAGP, Paris, 2023 Photo Christie’s
► Lights (1953) : The painter, following so many others, knows the fascination for the South and its light: Provence appears to him as “paradise, quite simply, with limitless horizons”. He dreams of transforming into a fixed point what will only be a stopover between two. In Provence, the painter puts his art back into play while reconnecting with the small format and the joys of painting on the motif – what he calls his “walking landscapes”.
► Sicily (1953 – 1954) : In August 1953, Nicolas de Stael, who has bought a van, is taking his family on a trip to Italy, heading for Sicily. Painting will come later, as a delayed echo of this lived experience.
Nicolas de Staël 1954 Sicily Grenoble Museum – © ADAGP, Paris, 2023 © Ville de Grenoble Grenoble Museum photo J.-L. Lacroix
► On the Road (1954) : His painting becomes lighter, giving up thickness in favor of fluidity. In his drawings, numerous in these times of travel, the artist goes towards the outline, always giving more importance, and presence, to the white of the paper.
Nicolas de Staël 1954 Agrigento Private collection Courtesy Applicat-Prazan, Paris – © ADAGP, Paris, 2023 Photo Annik Wetter
► Antibes (1954 – 1955) : Seeking fluidity and transparency, the painter uses cotton and gauze pads to spread the color. Seascapes and still lifes follow one another, Stael alternately painting the boats streaking the Mediterranean or the objects of the workshop. His paintings welcome life – its everydayness, its intimacy, its immensity.
If the private man is despaired by an impossible love, the artist remains, in his painting, intact in spite of everything. The paintings of Antibes testify to the permanence of his wonder at the world.
On March 16, 1955, Stael kills himself jumping from the roof terrace of his studio, leaving behind many paintings in progress. In the letter he leaves to his merchant, Jacques Dubourghe writes : ” I don’t have the strength to complete my paintings. »
Nicolas de Staël in his studio rue Gauguet summer 1954 – © Ministry of Culture Media library of heritage and photography, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais Denise Colomb © RMN-Grand Palais
The exhibition Nicolas de Stael is organized by the Paris Museum of Modern Art in close collaboration with the Hermitage Foundation in Lausanne, where it will be presented from February 9 to June 9, 2024.
Director of MAM Paris Fabrice Hergott Commissioners Charlotte Barat-Mabille and Pierre Wat Scientific Advisor Marie du Bouchet Sources Paris Museum of Modern Art
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