Nicolas de Staël (born Baron Nikolaï Vladimirovitch Staël von Holstein) was born in 1914 in St. Petersburg (then Petrograd), city of the Tsars, into a family of high-ranking military officers. The Bolshevik revolution forced the family into exile, and the young boy, orphaned in 1919, spent his early years living with his guardians in Brussels.
De Staël was a brilliant student at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Saint-Gilles-Les-Bruxelles (early 30s), and traveled extensively (Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Italy). During one of these trips, to North Africa (1938), he met his first wife, Jeannine Guillou, also a painter.
Arriving in France in 1938, he studied painting with Fernand Léger. 
During the Occupation. He could count on the support of gallery owner Jeanne Bucher, who believed in his talent and exhibited his work. The war kept Nicolas de Staël away from Paris; he joined the Foreign Legion. Demobilized (1940), he joined his partner in Nice, where he began to sell a few paintings. De Staël established contacts with artists who had taken refuge on the Côte d'Azur: Alberto Magnelli, Sonia Delaunay, Henri Goetz and others. Under their influence, his painting evolved from figuration to abstraction.

Returning to Paris in 1943, Nicolas de Staël met the painter César Domela, who greatly contributed to the evolution of his art towards chiaroscuro. The post-war period proved extremely difficult for the artist (few sales, hardship, death of his partner in 1946). In 1947, Nicolas de Staël moved to a new studio, close to Georges Braque's, in Paris. He married Françoise Chapouton. De Staël befriended the poet René Char, who commissioned him to illustrate his book Poèmes.
The early 50s saw a return to figurative painting. Extremely productive, he painted the Footballeurs series, a canvas that returned to figuration while retaining non-figurative qualities. His first American exhibition was organized at the Knoedler Gallery in New York. American collectors gave him a warm welcome. The pace of his production accelerated even further, with still lifes, landscapes and seascapes.
In love with a new wife, the painter spent the last years of his life in Antibes. Despite the success of his work, he sank into despair and committed suicide in 1955, leaving a body of work acclaimed the world over.