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In 1953, Nicolas de Staël, who was finally gaining commercial success as an artist after years without recognition, travelled to New York, but found himself almost immediately nauseous there. A deeply cultured man, whose childhood had involved a brief period as pageboy to the Tsar, followed by a fine and international education, de Staël was deeply in love with culture in all its forms. While the United States was increasingly marked by a formidable artistic identity, de Staël was hugely conscious of the difference in attitudes to history and art between the Americans and the Europeans. He felt almost naked, vulnerable, immersed in these fast-growing, vibrant modern surroundings. On returning to Europe he truly immersed himself once more in the art of all eras, with trips to many sights and centres of architectural and historic interest. While his art had already featured the reintroduction of figurative elements into the abstract after several years of exploring pure forms, this visit to the United States and de Staël's direct exposure to Abstract Expressionism cemented his visions. Almost all the epiphanies that led to de Staël's late works were credited in 1952-53, the period leading to and including his journey to New York. De Staël now concertedly tried to bridge the gap between abstraction and figuration, to reintroduce into these new art forms a tangible sense of the world around us. Likewise, he was seeking to reconcile the advances of abstraction, which he considered crucial to the development of Western art, with Europe's artistic canon and tradition. When, prior to this, during the early 1950s, de Staël's paintings had focussed on form in its own right, he had been trying to capture and paint a glimpse of a true secret of artistic creation, attempting to grasp a sense of the sublime in its own right. Composition, painted in 1951, is packed with earthy colours and textures, as the artist tries to embody on canvas the actual act of creation. This painting both represents and comprises the actual artistic process, de Staël stripping away the trimmings of aesthetics and other interests in order to drag forth into our world a moment of inception. The rich, mouth-watering impasto means that the viewer reacts almost physically to this work. De Staël had to act with extreme self-control and restraint to let his judgement and chance play in a painterly dance, creating a group of forms that are not the mere outlet of an artist, but that have tapped into the rich veins of Inspiration itself. The avoidance of the figurative that marked his works from that period soon gave way to other interests. It has been recounted that the clash of brightly lit football players, an exhibition of stained glass or certain places inspired him to introduce figuration into his art. De Staël did not consider his art figurative, but instead sought a means of reconciling Abstract Expressionism with the real world. Even in Composition the rich, gleaming forms have a sense of the material. However, in Syracuse, a work inspired by de Staël's stays in Sicily, the viewer sees forms appear in the centre of the canvas that unmistakably echo the shapes of a town filled with a monumentality suited to its ancient nature. This work has superficial similarities with transitional works by Mark Rothko, and yet where Rothko's paintings draw the viewer in, de Staël sought a means of allowing a sense of the world - here a sense of Syracuse - to invade the viewer's space. This work does not absorb but jumps at the viewer. The bright colours seem to seep from the picture, filling its surroundings with the rich colours redolent with exoticism, recalling the Sicilian soil itself. Stained glass is hailed as one of the instigators of the luminescence that characterised much of de Staël's work in the last three years of his life. Already apparent in the intensity of Syracuse, it reaches an apogee in Ciel, painted in 1955, the last year of his life. It was in 1955 that de Staël's quest to reconcile abstraction with the real world came to fruition. Ciel is a shimmering and sublime reflection of the sky, becoming clearer and clearer towards the top. De Staël has used blocks of colour for this painting, retaining the sense of painterly form that was visible in Composition. However, here they fuse together with harmonious purpose. This painting has a plasticity, an intense sense of presence, and yet perfectly evokes the sky that is its subject matter. Here, more than anywhere else, de Staël has depicted an element of reality, the sky, in an abstract form. There is a sense of the horizon, the viewer gazing into a deep and endless landscape, a rapturous vision of the heavens. The subject is clear, and yet the sense of the painting's autonomy, the feeling that it has in part almost created itself, eking out its own existence bit by bit, retains the almost theological interest of de Staël's abstract art. As an artist, de Staël felt a huge responsibility in his quest. The area that he was exploring at the end of his life was unique and had a huge influence on his contemporaries and their understanding of the possibilities of abstract art. However, he was a man for whom painting was a necessity, an outlet for his emotions. During the last two years of his life, the weight of the burden he had taken on, his responsibility as a pathfinder for modern artists, became greater and greater. De Staël was achieving his aim more and more in his paintings, lending abstract works a palpable sense of reality, and yet he was pushing himself further and further, gaining momentum yet becoming increasingly isolated and frustrated. While the quality of the works he produced during this period reflect success in so many ways, the burden apparently was too great. He was submitted to epiphany after epiphany, tapping endless sources of wonder and possibility in his art, and this began to take its toll. In 16 March 1955, he wrote several letters to various people, and in one wrote: "I don't have the strength to complete my paintings." (N. de Staël in a letter to J. Dubourg, quoted in: E.E. Rathbone, Nicolas de Staël in America, exh. cat., Washington, D.C., 1990, p.144.) This exhaustion and despair, caused by the immensity and intensity of the artist's vision, culminated in his tragic suicide leap the same day. William Paton THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR

Nicolas de Staël (1914-1955)

Syracuse

Details

Nicolas de Staël (1914-1955)
Syracuse
signed 'Stäel' (lower left); signed again, titled and dated 'Syracuse Stäel 1954' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
31 7/8 x 25 5/8in. (81 x 65cm.)
Painted in 1954

Provenance

Acquired directly from the artist by the family of the present owner.

Literature

P. Granville, "Nicolas de Staël, le dèroulement de son oeuvre tèmoigne d'un destin libre et nècessaire", in: Connaissance des Arts, Paris, no.160, June 1965 (illustrated in colour, p.87).
J. Dubourg and F. de Staël, Nicolas de Staël. Catalogue raisonné des peintures, Paris 1968, no.792 (illustrated, p.328).
F. de Staël, Nicolas de Staël. Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Neuchatel 1997, no.762 (illustrated, p.497).

Exhibited

Colmar, Musé d'Unterlinden, De Staël, June-October 1977, no.25 (illustrated in the catalogue in colour).

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Syracuse

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