(Saint-Petersbourg, 1914 - Antibes, 1955)
Composition, 1947
Brush and Indian ink
on charcoal on paper
Signed and dated in ink lower right Staël 47
73.3 x 54.3 cm
Provenance :
- Louis Gabriel Clayeux, Paris, 1947
- Private collection, Belgium
Exhibition :
Jean Dubuffet, Regard d'un collectionneur, Peintures, Sculptures, Aquarelles et Dessins 1945-1983, Château de Tanlay, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Tanlay, June 11 - October 3, 1988, reproduced in color in the catalog, (preface Dominique Bozo), éditions Elora, 1988, under n° 62
Literature :
Nicolas de Staël Catalogue Raisonné des œuvres sur papier par Françoise de Staël, Éditions Ides et Calendes, described and reproduced in black and white under no. 247
When he painted our Composition in 1947, Nicolas de Staël had just moved into his new Paris studio at 7 rue Gauguet in the 14th arrondissement.
Our Composition marks the end of a difficult period for the artist, who, after losing his wife, remarried almost immediately, superimposing his grief on a new marital bliss.
The works of this period bear witness to the artist's emotional charge, whose movements on canvas or paper take on a resonance all the stronger for having to dominate everything: personal pain, anxiety and stylistic fever...
Nicolas de Staël in his studio on rue Gauguet, 1947 Photographed by Edith Michaelis, silver print
Nicolas de Staël's drawings are above all experimental. It's essentially a bare exposure of the underlying structure of his paintings, a kind of anatomical drawing that reveals the tensions and directions that carry the painting.
Reduced to a minimalist form, our 1947 Composition in Indian ink and charcoal is marked by a brutal gesturality from which emerge intricate beams of light, forming a dense network that seems to be traversed by a background light, a stained-glass light. This luminous effect is achieved by the fluidity of the brushwork and the diluted background in the middle of the composition, contrasting with the powerful, dark, dense lines saturated with Indian ink of the central subject.
From the year of its creation in 1947, our Composition belonged to Louis Gabriel Clayeux (1913-2007).
French gallerist and art critic, Louis Gabriel Clayeux was artistic director of the Galerie Maeght in Paris from 1948 to 1965, after having worked at the Galerie Louis Carré, Paris.
The provenance of our Composition bears witness to the deep friendship between Nicolas de Staël and Louis Gabriel Clayeux, who had known each other since 1944. A loyal admirer from the outset, Louis Gabriel Clayeux, then assistant to Louis Carré, negotiated a contract for de Staël with the famous gallery owner on October 9, 1946.
Alberto Giacometti and Louis Gabriel Clayeux
Silver print
Nicolas de STAËL
La Part du Vent, 1944-1945
Oil on canvas, 114 x 146 cm
Provenance : Fomer collection Louis Gabriel Clayeux, Paris
The Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, has many works by Nicolas de Staël in its permanent collection, including these two drawings (Inv. AM 1977-5 / Inv. AM 1977-6), also dated 1947, similar to our Composition but smaller in size.
