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Lot Essay
THE ATELIERS OF NICOLAS DE STAËL
by Anne de Staël
The studio is a laboratory, a place of meditation and synthesis. When it becomes the theme of a painting, as it has for Courbet, Braque, Giacometti and so many others before them, it appears as a sort of mental self-portrait, a mirror of the artist's inner life through the progression of his investigations, and in his projection into the elusive.
In the work of Nicolas de Staël, there are five large paintings that tackled this theme in 1954 and 1955, each time with a specific tonality which, like in music, expresses a particular emotional state, lyrical fervor or structural attitude. According to his temperament, in each of these five ateliers a chance is taken to invent a plastic solution to the sensation of vertigo that affects his typically Russian relationship with the sensation of the absolute.
This inner energy can by its very intensity border on despair: Rothko can attain with it a meditative calm, whereas de Staël must summon up all his technical mastery to contain the commotion of an outsized personality. The music of Russian composers is to be listened to that way, in all its chromatism, passing effortlessly from the nostalgic tenderness of the violins to the fracas of the brass.
L'Atelier vert, the first of the five paintings on this theme appears in 1954 in refined Parisian light. It follows a series of landscapes in often incandescent colors, landscapes of Sicily or the south of France, made in Menerbes, and a few paintings with a more severe spectrum, views of Paris or still-lifes painted in the rue Gauguet.
A first look and we discover the familiar objects of the artist on a dark green background.
A more attentive look apprehends the boldness of an amazing and successful feat in this composition: the placement of the metaphorical volume of a studio reduced to the presence of symbolical objects (palette and canvas) inscribed in a false perspective on a green monochrome plane, which could be perceived analogically as the gold background of an icon, and suggests depth through the relative scale of the paintings, the first one painted as a still-life leaning against the legs of the table on which there is an oval palette, the others on an imaginary background, still in the stage of prepared canvases.
The cadence of the grays, occasionally brightened by a touch of color, is organized according to a subtle rhythm, in which two yellows form the base, one of them barely indicated in its bottle shape in the foreground, the other more assertive in what could be the obscurity of the background. The great artistry, is not that to render the unique space of a wall through the play of contradictions, shapes, colors or breadth, assuring its volume with the precise orchestration of each element. From this point on, you can situate this work among masterpieces.
L'Atelier rouge, in the Musée de Berne, was painted in Antibes in 1954 and seems, in the light of southern France to follow a course opposite of l'Atelier vert, with a fluidity and sensuality in the treatment of the subject that endows it with all of its individuality. He invents for these circumstances a range of broken reds modified from warm to cool, outlining wide iridescent strokes evoking the horizontality of a palette or the verticality of furniture or objects. A very small patch of blue, almost in the center, impertinent and inspired, assures by its presence alone the cohesion of the whole.
L'Atelier bleu was started in Antibes as early as 1954 and completed in 1955. The scale of the volume is suggested by large vertical patches with a dominant ultramarine blue changing to black. Like a revelation, the luminous core of works-in-progress is inscribed in the density of their radiance. The equilibrium of the relationship between lights and darks might declare serenity conquered, if the irreducible presence of fate did not impose itself on the mind in an imposed frontality.
L'Atelier orangé seems to condense the full blaze of a controlled passion. But suddenly at the very center of a barely delineated palette the brightness of a white spot bursts out like a major interrogation, whereas violets with the sonority of cellos give the brassy resonance of the oranges an air of solemnity. The precarious luminosity of the painting is an achievement of fugitive lighting at the limits of duration.
L'Atelier à Antibes of 1955 aims for depth in the articulation of the mauve tones, which are more or less sustained. The geometry of the angular forms would be nothing but a supremely intelligent game were it not dominated by the clarity of an array of violets with the density of velvet, electrified for some unknown alchemical operation by two yellows and two vigorous reds, and of the magisterial efficiency in controlling the response.
(fig. 1) L'Atelier rouge, 1954, Kunstmuseum, Berne.
(fig. 2) L'Atelier bleu, 1955, Private collection.
(fig. 3) L'Atelier orangé, 1955, Private collection, Paris.
(fig. 4) L'Atelier à Antibes, 1955, Kajikawa Foundation, Kyoto.
by Anne de Staël
The studio is a laboratory, a place of meditation and synthesis. When it becomes the theme of a painting, as it has for Courbet, Braque, Giacometti and so many others before them, it appears as a sort of mental self-portrait, a mirror of the artist's inner life through the progression of his investigations, and in his projection into the elusive.
In the work of Nicolas de Staël, there are five large paintings that tackled this theme in 1954 and 1955, each time with a specific tonality which, like in music, expresses a particular emotional state, lyrical fervor or structural attitude. According to his temperament, in each of these five ateliers a chance is taken to invent a plastic solution to the sensation of vertigo that affects his typically Russian relationship with the sensation of the absolute.
This inner energy can by its very intensity border on despair: Rothko can attain with it a meditative calm, whereas de Staël must summon up all his technical mastery to contain the commotion of an outsized personality. The music of Russian composers is to be listened to that way, in all its chromatism, passing effortlessly from the nostalgic tenderness of the violins to the fracas of the brass.
L'Atelier vert, the first of the five paintings on this theme appears in 1954 in refined Parisian light. It follows a series of landscapes in often incandescent colors, landscapes of Sicily or the south of France, made in Menerbes, and a few paintings with a more severe spectrum, views of Paris or still-lifes painted in the rue Gauguet.
A first look and we discover the familiar objects of the artist on a dark green background.
A more attentive look apprehends the boldness of an amazing and successful feat in this composition: the placement of the metaphorical volume of a studio reduced to the presence of symbolical objects (palette and canvas) inscribed in a false perspective on a green monochrome plane, which could be perceived analogically as the gold background of an icon, and suggests depth through the relative scale of the paintings, the first one painted as a still-life leaning against the legs of the table on which there is an oval palette, the others on an imaginary background, still in the stage of prepared canvases.
The cadence of the grays, occasionally brightened by a touch of color, is organized according to a subtle rhythm, in which two yellows form the base, one of them barely indicated in its bottle shape in the foreground, the other more assertive in what could be the obscurity of the background. The great artistry, is not that to render the unique space of a wall through the play of contradictions, shapes, colors or breadth, assuring its volume with the precise orchestration of each element. From this point on, you can situate this work among masterpieces.
L'Atelier rouge, in the Musée de Berne, was painted in Antibes in 1954 and seems, in the light of southern France to follow a course opposite of l'Atelier vert, with a fluidity and sensuality in the treatment of the subject that endows it with all of its individuality. He invents for these circumstances a range of broken reds modified from warm to cool, outlining wide iridescent strokes evoking the horizontality of a palette or the verticality of furniture or objects. A very small patch of blue, almost in the center, impertinent and inspired, assures by its presence alone the cohesion of the whole.
L'Atelier bleu was started in Antibes as early as 1954 and completed in 1955. The scale of the volume is suggested by large vertical patches with a dominant ultramarine blue changing to black. Like a revelation, the luminous core of works-in-progress is inscribed in the density of their radiance. The equilibrium of the relationship between lights and darks might declare serenity conquered, if the irreducible presence of fate did not impose itself on the mind in an imposed frontality.
L'Atelier orangé seems to condense the full blaze of a controlled passion. But suddenly at the very center of a barely delineated palette the brightness of a white spot bursts out like a major interrogation, whereas violets with the sonority of cellos give the brassy resonance of the oranges an air of solemnity. The precarious luminosity of the painting is an achievement of fugitive lighting at the limits of duration.
L'Atelier à Antibes of 1955 aims for depth in the articulation of the mauve tones, which are more or less sustained. The geometry of the angular forms would be nothing but a supremely intelligent game were it not dominated by the clarity of an array of violets with the density of velvet, electrified for some unknown alchemical operation by two yellows and two vigorous reds, and of the magisterial efficiency in controlling the response.
(fig. 1) L'Atelier rouge, 1954, Kunstmuseum, Berne.
(fig. 2) L'Atelier bleu, 1955, Private collection.
(fig. 3) L'Atelier orangé, 1955, Private collection, Paris.
(fig. 4) L'Atelier à Antibes, 1955, Kajikawa Foundation, Kyoto.