Nicolas DE STAËL

Nicolas de Staël – Biography, Woodcuts, Etchings and Original Lithographs

Nicolas de Staël (born Nikolai Vladimirovich Staël von Holstein in Saint Petersburg on 5 January 1914; died in Antibes on 16 March 1955) is one of the defining painters of post-war Paris. A Russian émigré brought up in Brussels and naturalised French in 1948, he moved within barely a decade from dark, heavily worked abstraction to radiant slabs of colour in which landscapes, still lifes and footballers reappear, refusing the quarrel between abstract and figurative art. His printmaking is small in scale and concentrated in his last five years: the woodcuts for René Char’s Poèmes, etchings and engravings for the poet-publisher Pierre Lecuire, and around twenty lithographs.

Le Coin des Arts follows de Staël’s work closely and offers his original prints whenever fine impressions become available, always distinguishing them from posthumous editions and reproductions. To be told when one arrives, simply “follow the artist” on this page.

An émigré childhood and a Brussels training

Born into an aristocratic military family, the boy left Saint Petersburg with his parents in the summer of 1919, in the wake of the Revolution. Both parents died in Poland, his father in 1921 and his mother in 1922, and Nicolas and his sisters were placed with the Fricero family in Brussels. In October 1933 he enrolled at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, studying under Henri Van Haelen. Travel completed his education: the Netherlands and Flemish painting, the south of France, a journey through Spain by bicycle, and then Morocco, where he met the painter Jeannine Guillou, his companion until her death in 1946. After a trip to Italy he settled in Paris in 1938, briefly attending Fernand Léger’s academy.

The Legion, Nice and occupied Paris

De Staël enlisted in the French Foreign Legion in 1939, served in North Africa and was demobilised in September 1940. The years in Nice that followed brought him into contact with Alberto Magnelli, Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, and in 1942 he painted his first abstract canvases. Back in Paris in 1943, he was taken up by the dealer Jeanne Bucher, who showed him alongside Kandinsky and César Domela in February 1944. His first solo exhibition, at the Galerie L’Esquisse in May 1944, caught the eye of Georges Braque.

Recognition in Paris and a cool reception in London

After Jeannine Guillou’s death in February 1946, de Staël married Françoise Chapouton and signed with Louis Carré; Jacques Dubourg later became his most loyal dealer. The Musée national d’art moderne bought Composition (les pinceaux) in 1950, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York followed in 1951. London was slower: his exhibition at the Matthiesen Gallery early in 1952 disappointed, with the critics John Russell and Denys Sutton among the few to champion him. That same spring, on 26 March 1952, the France–Sweden football match at the Parc des Princes sparked the Footballeurs series and the monumental Parc des Princes, attacked at the Salon de Mai as a betrayal of abstraction; in October 2019 the canvas made about €20 million at Christie’s Paris.

Provence, Sicily and Antibes: the last years

A commercially and critically successful show at Knoedler in New York in March 1953 was followed the same year by an exclusive contract with the dealer Paul Rosenberg. In summer 1953 he worked at Lagnes in the Vaucluse, travelled to Sicily and bought the Castelet at Ménerbes; the Sicilian and Provençal landscapes were exhibited in New York and Paris in 1954. That September he moved to Antibes, where he died on 16 March 1955, aged 41, leaving Le Concert unfinished.

De Staël in British collections and exhibitions

Britain caught up quickly after his death. The memorial retrospective opened at the Musée national d’art moderne in Paris in early 1956 and travelled to the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in May–June 1956. In 1981 the Grand Palais retrospective was also shown at the Tate Gallery. Tate holds Marathon (1948), Composition 1950 and Landscape Study (1952), and the print room of the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh keeps the lithographed cover of Lecuire’s Maximes, bequeathed by the collector of French illustrated books W. J. Strachan. The most recent major retrospectives were at the Centre Pompidou (2003) and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (2023–24), which drew more than 400,000 visitors before travelling to the Fondation de l’Hermitage in Lausanne.

The printed work: woodcuts, etchings and lithographs

The standard catalogue is Françoise Woimant and Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël. L’Œuvre gravé, published by the Bibliothèque nationale in 1979. It records 107 plates made between 1949 and 1954 – some forty woodcuts, some forty intaglio plates, about twenty lithographs and two linocuts – of which 42 appeared in books; a citation such as “Woimant 93” refers to its numbering. The first great project was René Char’s Poèmes: 14 woodcuts in an edition of 120 copies signed by poet and painter, published at the artist’s expense, with letterpress by Fequet et Baudier; de Staël chose the paper, type and case himself (see relief printing). For Pierre Lecuire he made two engravings and a lithograph for Voir Nicolas de Staël (1953), twenty black etchings for Ballets-Minute (1954) and the colour lithograph cover of Maximes (1955). His separate lithographs, often self-published, were pulled in tiny editions: Le Mur, étude en couleur (1951, 35 impressions, Woimant 93) and Nuit au Parc des Princes (1952, printed by Jean Pons, 15 impressions, Woimant 100). See also lithography and intaglio.

Collecting Nicolas de Staël prints: a buyer’s guide

Scarcity. With barely a hundred plates and editions often of a few dozen, genuine lifetime prints are rare; a plentiful, cheap supply should put you on guard. See what is an original print.

Edition and numbering. Check the numbering against the edition recorded by Woimant – 15 for Nuit au Parc des Princes, 35 for Le Mur. See the printing.

Signature. Lithographs printed in his lifetime are usually signed in pencil; the Poèmes woodcuts are signed only in the colophon, by Char and de Staël. A signature printed in the stone is not a hand signature.

Posthumous lithographs. In 1958 the Galerie Jacques Dubourg had lithographs after de Staël’s collages printed at Mourlot for a catalogue and posters, some in editions of 500 with “Nicolas” printed in the image. They are posthumous interpretations, not plates from the Woimant catalogue.

Reproductions. Stencil plates from the review XXe Siècle, art-book illustrations, exhibition posters and later covers (such as the 1966 Lettres de Nicolas de Staël à Pierre Lecuire) are regularly sold as “lithographs”.

Condition and provenance. Look for toning of the ivory wove sheets, light-faded colour and old hinges; a single leaf from Poèmes or Ballets-Minute comes from a broken book and should be described as such. Our guarantees are set out on the authenticity page; for display, see framing with UV-filtering glazing.

Alongside de Staël, the gallery shows prints by fellow painters of post-war Paris, among them Serge Poliakoff, André Lanskoy, Alfred Manessier, Maurice Estève and Jean Bazaine. Explore the School of Paris and Lyrical Abstraction, our engravings and lithographs and our illustrated books.

Sources and further reading

Françoise Woimant and Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël. L’Œuvre gravé, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, 1979 · Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël. Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, Ides et Calendes, Neuchâtel, 1997 · Nicolas de Staël: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Ides et Calendes, 2021 · Nicolas de Staël. Catalogue raisonné des œuvres sur papier, Ides et Calendes, 2013 · Tate – Nicolas de Staël · National Galleries of Scotland – Maximes cover · BnF – Nuit au Parc des Princes · Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris – 2023 retrospective