Nicolas de Staël
PainterKnown for:
thick impasto abstract and semi-figurative painting
Education:
Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
Nicolas de Staël fled Russia as a child after the Revolution and spent his career in France developing a practice of thickly impastoed abstract painting that gradually introduced recognizable subjects - stadiums, musicians, the Sicilian landscape - into its surfaces. His late work, made in the final two years of his life in the Var and in Antibes, has a chromatic intensity and physical urgency that distinguishes it from anything he had made before. He died by suicide in Antibes in 1955 at 41.
Nicolas de Staël's Gear List(1)
Generic
Connection Source
Applicat PrazanWebsite
Connection note
Applied unmixed single-hue patches with putty knife and trowel; in final period, thinned paint with turpentine and applied with wads of gauze
Product description
Oil paint — pigment suspended in a drying oil, typically linseed — has been the dominant painting medium since the fifteenth century. It dries slowly, allowing extended blending, and produces a rich, luminous surface. Available from dozens of manufacturers at student through professional grades.
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Last updated March 20, 2026
