We have previously discussed in this column the lives of people like Van Gogh or Paul Gauguin, who struggled for their art till their final breath, transferring their artistic visions to their creations before dying penniless but extremely satisfied to have realised their dreams.

Hence, it is certainly not a coincidence that the French art authorities this year have decided to embark on the daring adventure of introducing to the public such geniuses of the past who lived short lives but nevertheless succeeded in creating miraculous works that, in some cases, disappeared with the passage of time.

One such idiosyncratic figure that is being reintroduced to the public is the young artist named Nicolas de Staël, who restlessly worked on his personal visions, and then took his own life. He was later generally ignored by art historians.

The Modern Art Museum in Paris is currently having an exclusive show of Staël’s creations, by putting together a collection of more than 200 works, including oil paintings, watercolour paintings and paper sketches. These have been brought to Paris from museums, as well as private collections, across European and American cities. This exhibition will later be moved to the Lausanne Museum by the Geneva Lake. But first, a few words about Staël himself.

Nicolas de Staël’s idiosyncratic artworks and personality are back under the spotlight thanks to an ongoing exhibition in Paris

Born Nikolai Vladimirovich Staël von Holstein on December 23, 1914 in Saint Petersburg in a family of Russian aristocrats, he moved to France as a little boy with his parents, following the Soviet revolution in 1917. Travelling with his parents from city to city in France, the young Nikolai Vladimirovich developed a passion for art, later tirelessly creating nearly 2,000 works in 15 years.

He then destroyed half of them because they did not reach the level of perfection he had intended to acquire. He put a French-sounding signature, Nicolas de Staël, under the surviving chef d’oeuvres.

Though his influences included Cézanne, Matisse, Van Gogh, Braque, Soutine and the Fauves, Staël ceaselessly rejected efforts by critics to link his style to any painter or art movement of the day. His restlessness with art, and finally with his own life, reached its peak when, at the age of 40, Staël threw himself to death on March 16, 1955 from the roof of the house where he lived and worked in Antibes on the sunny French Riviera. Fairly recently, the building was renovated and classified as a historic monument.

During his brief existence, Staël never ceased to renew his style, producing a remarkably rich and complex body of works unaffected by the trends of the age, thus deliberately overturning the distinction between abstractions and figurations. He wrote in his diary: “Living would be such a painful exercise without painting. I must go on doing it till the last breath of my life!”

The current show allows us to follow the artist’s incredible quests, step by step, beginning with his youthful travels and his first years in Paris, then his trips to the hilly southern city Vaucluse and to Sicily, and finally his last months in Antibes in his studio facing the sea.

The organisers have taken special care to include in the catalogue an interview with Anne de Staël, the artist’s daughter, today 81-years-old and a well-known French writer-poet, as well as the full text of Diary of the Staël Years by Pierre Lecuire, a close friend of his who died 10 years ago.

‘Nicolas de Staël’ at the Modern Art Museum in Paris is on display from September 15, 2023-January 21, 2024

The writer is an art critic based in Paris. He can be reached at ZafMasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 7th, 2024