Nick Stahl von Holstein, or Nicolas de Stael

[LCR]

Painting - a duel with a canvas, it requires a monstrous physical impact. Art became known as Expressionism, so its abstraction - a term which he denied - full of passion, anxiety, anger ...

In painting steel usually identify 3 periods:

Artist dramatiyaeskogo realism, he tries to open the elementary and fundamental nature pumila: 1942 - 1950

Unlike his compatriot Andrei Lansky, Nicolas de Stael has since 1942 moved away from figurative painting. Composition of gray handicap - one of his first abstract works. Already in these works manifest personality Steel - a muted palette of gray and black tones, busy tones of rare white and red, which chromatic foreshadow his mature works and shows his amazing talent colorist.

During the second period of his abstract compositions have reached the limit of development: 1951 - 1952

He returned to figurative painting - landscapes, portraits, still lifes, painted in bright colors. Technology has changed him, dense and dark texture of his early works was less pasty, palette became more intense. Simplified forms, and color contrasts intensified, reaching paroxysm.

In 1952, dated some of his best canvases - "Roof", "football", "Bottles in the studio, Big Orange nude", "Where do not turn - Cezanne and Bonnard right here ...

Steel wrote a palette knife, the forms are sweeping. Now almost all his work he describes in one word "Composition".

Living in Antibes: 1954 - 1955

Steel refuses spatula in favor of brushes. The texture is light and fluid. It feels more natural light (earlier he often worked under floodlights). In 1954, he wrote more than 300 works (the union catalog contains little more than a thousand pieces).