Nicolas de Staël – an Artist in Pursuit of Light
Remembering a visionary painter, Nicolas de Staël's granddaughter shares her unique insight in to his practice.
T he granddaughter of Nicolas de Staël and daughter of the poet André du Bouchet, is a formally educated philosopher, the producer of radio broadcasts on art, and author of several books about painting. Marie du Bouchet is also the scientific consultant for the Nicolas de Staël retrospective, held at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris which runs until 21 January 2024. Moreover, she is the coordinator of the Nicolas de Staël Committee, which will make it possible for the Arléa publishing house to release unprecedented texts about the artist.
Sotheby's: How would you define the work of Nicolas de Staël? Do you prefer his abstract beginnings, which are very dark and textured; or rather his latter work, which is colourful and figurative?
Marie du Bouchet: He is a painter whose entire work developed in a very organic way, from start to finish. After his first figurative attempts, which made him uncomfortable, he chose abstraction beginning in 1944, and produced rather dark works. However, they still show a pursuit of light, even if it is buried deep within. It is that source of light that he sought after his entire life, like a vast space that might be situated behind the canvas and that he wanted to bring to the surface. This struggle of shapes, lines and colours created the tension of that underlying space which opened, bit by bit, through the unfolding of different periods, until 1955. That was when a more intense light emerged, along with a more flowing painting technique featuring more solid swathes of colour. But that luminous surface is the result of an excavation process which he had been developing since the beginning. With that very rational, organic research connecting the various stages of creation, it is very difficult for me to choose any particular period of Nicolas de Staël’s work.
And does that approach also apply to all the genres chosen by the artist, from still life to
nudes?
Every time, it’s the same pursuit. The still lifes, like the landscapes, take up space. They have a landscape structure with a very solid base and a sky that allows the objects to stand out. The viewer feels the heavy, substantial aspect of the still life, as well as its light, airy side. That is also what he sought to achieve in his landscapes: being rooted in the soil and yet occupying space in the air. The structure of the base is always what makes it possible for the perspective to rise towards the sky. In the nudes, such as Nu bleu (1955), the body takes up space similarly to the way a landscape does. Nicolas de Staël did not seek to faithfully portray the body, but rather to show how it occupies and reveals space.
You have spoken quite a bit about light and space, but not much about colour...
In his work, light most often takes the form of colour. He is unique in that he pushes hues to interact in a very original way. In certain pieces he executed at Le Lavandou, for example, the palette he used could appear jarring. However, through the use of those colours, he achieved a balance that may be compared to the first impression of being blinded by a light. He used painting to convey that dazzle printed on the retina.
Are those very original colour combinations – those juxtaposed blues, reds, violets and those pinks, yellows, oranges – the culmination of long research, or are they innate and spontaneous?
His paintings prior to 1954 were built up in layers with an elaborate colour preparation process. He applied rectangles of texture to the canvas like rubble stones or fragments of colourful mosaic representing burning embers, dulling the appearance of the underlying colours that were first applied. It was an overlapping process of successive layers. Nicolas de Staël allowed the underlying colour to resonate: he did not completely cover it. He was therefore something of a paradoxical painter, since he demonstrated spontaneousness, emergence and rapidity, and yet also deliberateness, structure and research.
When you mentioned underlying colours emerging along the edges of solid swathes, I thought of the work of Mark Rothko which is also being exhibited at the same time at Fondation Louis Vuitton. Quite rightly. Even if their paintings use texture in very different – even opposite – ways, the two artists do share a sort of coloured vibration.
In 2018, you collaborated with Gustave de Staël to curate the “Nicolas de Staël” exhibition at Hôtel de Caumont in Aix-en-Provence. He had exhibited some of his father’s small-format works at the Hôtel de Ville de Paris in 1994. Do you believe that people’s views of this artist are evolving?
Yes, absolutely. Perspectives change. After Nicolas de Staël died, only his masterpieces were exhibited, to the almost complete exclusion of any preparatory works or sketches. Bit by bit, those intermediary works began to be shown. At the Musée du Havre in 2014, for example, Calais – the 1954 painting that appeared on the catalogue cover and poster – was brought out for the first time. From the 1950s until 2003, and throughout the retrospective at Centre Pompidou, De Staël’s return to figuration – and landscapes of his that were considered too “traditional” – were also sidestepped. That left an immense discrepancy between the taste of the specialists and that of the public. Now, though, people want to be surprised. They want to discover a different Nicolas de Staël. His sketches will be very conspicuous in the retrospective at the Musée d’Art moderne de Paris, and that’s only fitting, since drawing was extremely important to the artist. Some sketches were part of his preparation, others he executed during the painting process. They show the structure of the painting, the firmness of the brush strokes, the space on the white page ready to receive the colour. In 2001, Anne de Staël – Nicolas de Staël’s daughter – was the first to emphasise the importance of turning lines into colours.
When was the Comité Nicolas de Staël founded, and what is its role?
Françoise de Staël, the artist’s widow, founded the committee in 2005 in collaboration with his children and the Parisian art dealer Jean-François Jaeger. Its purpose is expertise and authentication. In fact, we just recovered two unprecedented paintings from 1952: a football player and a beautiful landscape. In addition to assisting publishing houses interested by the artist’s works, the Comité Nicolas de Staël has made it possible to publish three successive, well-structured catalogues of his paintings. The first was compiled in 1968 by Françoise de Staël and the painter’s dealer, Jacques Dubourg.
The second, in 1997, features the artist’s full correspondence. The last, in 2021, is printed in colour, and includes recent discoveries that round out the 1,120 known paintings by De Staël. All share the presence of that light which emerges at first sight of the work. His paintings do not play on structures of cold shapes. They always point to the very realistic impression of a certain light. That is a reality that Nicolas de Staël always manages to render, in all his works.
Does it still affect us as strongly?
I certainly get that impression. When you are confronted with one of his paintings, it is like being confronted with nature, without it being an imitation of nature. Pierre Lecuire, a writer who was a friend of Nicolas de Staël – and whose journal, which we publish in the catalogue, was recently uncovered – took note of his impressions after each visit he paid to the workshop. Describing the moment when he opened the workshop door on 23 April 1948, Pierre Lecuire wrote, “It seemed to me that I had just opened a door onto nature.”
