The painting "Parc des Princes" by Nicolas de Stael was auctioned Thursday 17 October 20 million euros at auction organized in Paris by Christie's. This is a record for this French painter of Russian origin.
"Parc des Princes", dating from 1952, was estimated between 18 and 25 million euros and was on the market for the first time. On this huge canvas, there is a stylized night football game with large rectangular colored pastes - teal blue, malachite, sky blue, red, electric white and intense black.
The sum of 20 million euros (including costs) offered by a European private buyer for this canvas of 2.5 meters by 3 is almost double the previous record of Nicolas de Stael, born Nikolai Vladimirovich Staël von Holstein in Saint Petersburg , to 12.1 million dollars (11 million euros) for the canvas "Naked standing", auctioned by Christie's in New York in 2018.
"Art Summit"
Owned by the artist's descendants since his death in 1955 at age 41, the work has been exhibited only a dozen times: in New York in 1953, and in Paris at the National Museum of Modern Art in 1956, before the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in 1972, the Grand Palais in Paris three years later, and London and Madrid in 1991. The painting was again shown in Paris in 2003, at the Pompidou Center.
According to Christies's, this painting represents "the top of Nicolas de Staël's art, as well as a decisive moment in the history of post-war Western art".
The artist realized it after attending with his wife at a football match between France and Sweden at the Parc des Princes in Paris. At the Park that night, we played "at night with electric lighting, and so it's a Parisian event that Nicolas de Staël decided to attend," says the specialist Pierre Martin-Vivier, director of the twentieth century department of Christie's .
"A turning point in his career"
"On the night of the match, Nicolas de Staël goes home, in his studio rue Gauguet in the 14th arrondissement, next to Montsouris Park and he paints sketches, he is amazed by what he sees, by this game of players, colors, lights, "he continues.
"For a month, he will work like crazy to paint 25 paintings, more or less large, more or less figurative and he ends with this large painting called 'Park Princes footballers'", a turning point in his career , while he was divided between abstraction and figuration, says the specialist.
Born in Saint-Petersburg in 1914 into a family of aristocrats and forced to flee Russia after the Bolshevik revolution, Nicolas de Stael settled in Paris in 1938. After a brief stint in Fernand Léger's studio, he became friendship with members of the Parisian avant-garde, including Sonia Delaunay or Le Corbusier, who encourage her penchant for abstraction.
With AFP