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Lot Essay
Avec ses aplats rectangulaires de matière lumineuse, Composition (1950) offre à voir l’art résolument moderne de Nicolas de Staël. Abandonnant au tournant des années 1950 ses compositions en bâtons brisés, l’artiste privilégie alors des formes plus douces qu’il dépose sur sa toile, au couteau, par strates. À priori abstraites, celles-ci restent, comme malgré elles, empreintes du réel. Composition (1950) convoque ainsi les couleurs de la nature : un camaïeu de bleu rappelant le ciel côtoie un jaune de sable, auxquels répondent des touches de vert-de-gris terreux, un nuage de blanc et un gouffre noir. L’œuvre, qui a appartenu au conservateur et historien de l’art Jean Leymarie, intervient également à une étape charnière pour l’artiste. C’est en effet en 1950 que Staël intègre pour la première fois, sous l’impulsion de son directeur Bernard Dorival, les collections du Musée national d’Art moderne ou encore que le Museum of Fine Arts de Boston fait l’acquisition de Rue Gauguet (1949). Une œuvre que Jean Leymarie lui-même, qui prend alors la direction du musée de Grenoble, tente d’acheter pour son institution avant de s’y résigner, faute de moyens. Composition (1950), offerte par Staël au conservateur visionnaire, qui dirigera le Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris puis l’Académie de France à Rome, est ainsi le fruit de l’évolution artistique du peintre mais également le marqueur d’une époque, celle de la reconnaissance institutionnelle de sa palette demeurée unique.
With its rectangular slabs of luminous material, Composition (1950) presents the resolutely modern art of Nicolas de Staël. At the turn of the 1950s, abandoning his arrangements of broken sticks, the artist then turned to gentler forms which he applied to his canvas in layers with a palette knife. At first sight appearing abstract, as if against their will these layers remain imbued with the real. Composition (1950) thus summons up the colours of nature: a monochrome blue reminiscent of the sky rubs shoulders with a sandy yellow, offset by earthy touches of verdigris, a cloud of white and a gulf of black. This work, which once belonged to the art historian and conservator Jean Leymarie, was created at a key time in the artist’s career. It was in fact in 1950 that, thanks to the influence of Bernard Dorival, director of the Museum of Modern Art, this work by de Staël was included in its collections for the first time and that the Boston Museum of Fine Arts acquired his Rue Gauguet (1949). Jean Leymarie himself, who had then taken over the management of the Grenoble Museum, tried to buy Composition (1950) for his institution before abandoning the idea for lack of funds. Composition (1950), which de Staël offered to the visionary conservator (later director the Museum of Modern Art of the city of Paris and then of the Académie de France in Rome), was thus the fruit of the painter’s artistic development but also marked an era, the institutional recognition of his still unique palette.
With its rectangular slabs of luminous material, Composition (1950) presents the resolutely modern art of Nicolas de Staël. At the turn of the 1950s, abandoning his arrangements of broken sticks, the artist then turned to gentler forms which he applied to his canvas in layers with a palette knife. At first sight appearing abstract, as if against their will these layers remain imbued with the real. Composition (1950) thus summons up the colours of nature: a monochrome blue reminiscent of the sky rubs shoulders with a sandy yellow, offset by earthy touches of verdigris, a cloud of white and a gulf of black. This work, which once belonged to the art historian and conservator Jean Leymarie, was created at a key time in the artist’s career. It was in fact in 1950 that, thanks to the influence of Bernard Dorival, director of the Museum of Modern Art, this work by de Staël was included in its collections for the first time and that the Boston Museum of Fine Arts acquired his Rue Gauguet (1949). Jean Leymarie himself, who had then taken over the management of the Grenoble Museum, tried to buy Composition (1950) for his institution before abandoning the idea for lack of funds. Composition (1950), which de Staël offered to the visionary conservator (later director the Museum of Modern Art of the city of Paris and then of the Académie de France in Rome), was thus the fruit of the painter’s artistic development but also marked an era, the institutional recognition of his still unique palette.