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Lot Essay
Nicolas de Staël's Paysage marks the foundation of a two-year period of intense and rapid development in which de Staël's paintings grew ever more spectacular in their reductive power. "Throughout the period from the summer of 1952 to the spring of 1954, de Staël's development was rapid," explains critic, Douglas Cooper. "His pictorial invention was harnessed to a great effort, and in everything he produced one feels the force of his originality and vitality. Gradually he simplified his method of composition until, with four or five broad areas of color he could evoke not merely the constituent elements of a landscape--sky, hills, buildings and a road for example--but even a harbor with boats, a lighthouse among the dunes, or a nude reclining on a divan. Now, in these landscapes and seascapes, de Staël often composed on the Impressionist principle of parallel planes laid out one above the other... In addition, de Staël tends to accentuate this perspective by placing in the foreground of his picture one or more repoussoirs (counterpoints) which may or may not be representational but are always strong in tonality" (D. Cooper, Nicolas de Staël, London, 1961, pp. 62-63).
A substantial part of the effect of de Staël's paintings was the attraction to the tactile quality of paint. As in Paysage, the malleability and expressive potential of oils were now carefully arranged in calm pictorial forms, delicately laying thick ribbons of varying shades of blue and green across the horizontal of the picture plane to evoke sky, water, and earth. Although, here, the artist discarded the obvious impulsiveness of his previous works, the movement towards the more simplified order still revealed inner tensions, this time controlled by linear, or geometric order. While the compositional structure of these works in the subsequent years was more subdued in comparison to their predecessors, the application of the paint with the ubiquitous palette knife was still apparent, and to remain a characteristic element of his entire oeuvre.
Until the early 1950s, de Staël had been painting in a completely abstract manner, having been influenced by Alberto Magnelli, Jean Arp and André Lanskoy. His pictures were filled with strange agglomerations of rhythmic form that had an emphatic presence. However, following various epiphanies, he began to formulate a means of introducing figurative reality into his pictures. While in part, he was influenced by the landscapes that he saw during his travels through Sicily and the Mediterranean, he was more famously inspired by a soccer match at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris. There, seeing the movement of the players, wearing their brightly-colored garb, under the glaring spotlights, de Staël was given the impetus to capture movement and form through blocks of raw color. Borrowing his influence from Henri Matisse, both the simplification and raw power of the Fauve master's late cut-outs, where pure blocks of color became the driving forces of the composition, de Staël's landscapes echoed the simplified elegance reminiscent of Matisse's The Snail and Memory of Oceania. As with Matisse, de Staël powerfully asserted extraordinary confidence with an apparent nonchalance and immediacy.
A substantial part of the effect of de Staël's paintings was the attraction to the tactile quality of paint. As in Paysage, the malleability and expressive potential of oils were now carefully arranged in calm pictorial forms, delicately laying thick ribbons of varying shades of blue and green across the horizontal of the picture plane to evoke sky, water, and earth. Although, here, the artist discarded the obvious impulsiveness of his previous works, the movement towards the more simplified order still revealed inner tensions, this time controlled by linear, or geometric order. While the compositional structure of these works in the subsequent years was more subdued in comparison to their predecessors, the application of the paint with the ubiquitous palette knife was still apparent, and to remain a characteristic element of his entire oeuvre.
Until the early 1950s, de Staël had been painting in a completely abstract manner, having been influenced by Alberto Magnelli, Jean Arp and André Lanskoy. His pictures were filled with strange agglomerations of rhythmic form that had an emphatic presence. However, following various epiphanies, he began to formulate a means of introducing figurative reality into his pictures. While in part, he was influenced by the landscapes that he saw during his travels through Sicily and the Mediterranean, he was more famously inspired by a soccer match at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris. There, seeing the movement of the players, wearing their brightly-colored garb, under the glaring spotlights, de Staël was given the impetus to capture movement and form through blocks of raw color. Borrowing his influence from Henri Matisse, both the simplification and raw power of the Fauve master's late cut-outs, where pure blocks of color became the driving forces of the composition, de Staël's landscapes echoed the simplified elegance reminiscent of Matisse's The Snail and Memory of Oceania. As with Matisse, de Staël powerfully asserted extraordinary confidence with an apparent nonchalance and immediacy.