Nicolas de Staël [antikvár]

t Hi / / ra Composition «Astronomy», 1944 Oil, 40V2" x 94V2" Collection of Prince Igor Troubetzkoy, Paris summit; an elemental; a shining candelabrum; a foundation; a majestic vertical; a fulsomeness; a prehension; this weaving texture like a shoal reef; an eternal, interior thunder; a chaos of things that precedes creation; a disciplined disorderliness; a palpable substance; a grumble; pictures armed with disarmingness; a story told in direct speech when one would have sworn it could only be related indirectly; an uneasiness; worn but intact; exempt from dimensions; a perpetual orphan. Here we have some possible and impossible equivalents of this alarming painting. » For those who knew him these excerpts from a descriptive litany by Pierre Lecuire' form an exact portrait of Nicolas de Staël. « Elemental, » « shining candelabrum, » « disciplined disorderliness,» «uneasiness,» «worn but intact,» «perpetual orphan» correspond so exactly to what Nicolas de Staël was around 1950 that we may doubt that these expressions apply, as Lecuire would have it, only to the man's painting. If such were the case, then it means that Nicolas de Staël is visible in all his work. And not only because one recognizes his style at every moment in his short career, but because he painted with his entire being. Nicolas de Staël was an ontological painter. He is the artist of our time who has come closest to the essence of painting, to such a point that his life and death became intermingled with it. Certainly, one can think of other painters from the past who struggled with this angel and lost their lives. But when Staël made his appearance around 1944-1945, he was the only one — and remains the only one — who Voir Nicolas de Staël (1953).