Nicolas De Staël (Saint Petersbourg, Russia 5/01/1914 - Paris, France 16/03/1955), Les martigues, 1954. Oil on canvas, 19 x 24 cm; 35 x 40 cm (with frame). Bailly Gallery at Brafa Art Fair, Brussels, 21-29 january 2017.

Nicolas de Staël, Catalogue Raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Neuchâtel, 1997, p.530, no.821, illustrated.

Nicolas de Staël is one of the most influential european painters during the post-war years. Today his paintings are worth several millions euros and can be found in the collections of public institutions all over the world. 
During his career, Nicolas de Staël always oscillated between abstraction and figuration. After a first realistic period, an encounter with Georges Braque drove him on a path progressively leading to abstraction, where he discovered the simple rhythms of the nature and where he aimed to penetrate reality to its quintessence. From the beginning of the 1940’s, de Staël abandoned figurative representation for a more liberated expression of chromatic values used without any mimetic consideration. He reached the height of abstract painting in the early 1950’s and returned to a figurative representation of the world surrounding him.
Our oil on canvas, titled Les Martigues, is perfectly representative of this period of figurative revival in the artist’s work. De Staël depicts a totally identifiable scenery while keeping from his abstract phase a taste for simple shapes and a very colorful palette.
Martigues is a French town situated in the Bouches-du-Rhône region. The artist was very fond of the South of France. In 1954, after a darker period in his work, Nicolas de Staël settled in Antibes where he rediscovered the sunny Mediterranean landscapes with their barks and boats. Our painting is a significant example of this new freedom experienced by the artist who flawlessly shows us here his dazzling colorist skills. 

Provenance: Private Collection, France
Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Paris
Private Collection, Paris

Exhibition: Paris, Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Revoir Nicolas de Staël, 21 May -12 Jully 1981.

Literature: Jacques Dubourg et Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël, Catalogue Raisonné des peintures, Paris, 1968, p.311, no.749, illustrated.
Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël, Catalogue Raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Neuchâtel, 1997, p.530, no.821, illustrated. Paris, Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Revoir Nicolas de Staël, 21 May -12 Jully 1981; catalogue, no.55, illustrated.

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