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Lot Essay
Executed in 1952, Ivry is comprised of luscious, lavishly generous dollops of exquisite impasto paint applied in alluring configurations of form and colour. Painted just before his triumphant exhibition in New York where he was been lauded as the leading European artist of his generation, the work shows how 'De Stauel... was a master at reducing things to essentials and his painting is never rhetorical or overloaded. Being a very fine painter, as well as a painter who loved broad effects, he could manage with a few carefully chosen shapes and subtle tonalities... to convey an extraordinarily full visual experience' (D. Cooper, Nicolas de Stauel, London 1961, p. 73). With its dominating horizontal planes of olive green and different blues subtly suggesting a broad expanse of land, sea and sky, de Stauel has realised his composition using rich swathes of pure, thick oils generously applied with a palette knife and magically organised into dynamically intersecting but ultimately coherent structures.
Ivry marks the start of de Stauel's unique adventure into the fusion of abstraction and figuration that he first embarked upon in Paris one year earlier. 'I do not set up abstract painting in opposition to figurative', de Stauel explained, 'a painting should be both abstract and figurative: abstract to the extent that it is a flat surface, figurative to the extent that it is a representation of space' (N. de Stauel quoted in R. van Gindertael, Nicolas de Stauel, Galerie Beyeler, Basel, 1966, translated in Nicolas de Stauel in America, exh. cat., Washington D.C., 1990, p. 22). Each abstract mark asserts a vitality and independence on the canvas surface that speaks of the gestural act of painting whilst nevertheless adhering to a representational function. Hovering on the very brink of abstraction, to paint like this was a delicate balancing act that de Stauel suggested could induce in him a sense of 'vertigo'. 'I want my painting... to be like a tree, like a forest' he once said, 'One moves from a line, from a delicate stroke, to a point, to a patch... just as one moves from a twig to a trunk of a tree. But everything must hold together, everything must be in place.' (N. de Stauel quoted by R. van Gindertal, in Cimaise, no.7, June 1955, pp. 3-8).
Ivry marks the start of de Stauel's unique adventure into the fusion of abstraction and figuration that he first embarked upon in Paris one year earlier. 'I do not set up abstract painting in opposition to figurative', de Stauel explained, 'a painting should be both abstract and figurative: abstract to the extent that it is a flat surface, figurative to the extent that it is a representation of space' (N. de Stauel quoted in R. van Gindertael, Nicolas de Stauel, Galerie Beyeler, Basel, 1966, translated in Nicolas de Stauel in America, exh. cat., Washington D.C., 1990, p. 22). Each abstract mark asserts a vitality and independence on the canvas surface that speaks of the gestural act of painting whilst nevertheless adhering to a representational function. Hovering on the very brink of abstraction, to paint like this was a delicate balancing act that de Stauel suggested could induce in him a sense of 'vertigo'. 'I want my painting... to be like a tree, like a forest' he once said, 'One moves from a line, from a delicate stroke, to a point, to a patch... just as one moves from a twig to a trunk of a tree. But everything must hold together, everything must be in place.' (N. de Stauel quoted by R. van Gindertal, in Cimaise, no.7, June 1955, pp. 3-8).