Nicolas de Staël

Nicolas de Staël was born in 1914 into the military aristocracy of St. Petersburg. To escape the revolution, the family emigrated to Poland, and from here, on the death of his parents, the young Nicolas was sent to live with a Russian family in Brussels. Ten years later he studied at the Brussels Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, traveled through Europe and north Africa, and met his first life-partner, Jeannine Guillou. Between 1939 and 1941 de Staël served in the French Foreign Legion, returning first to Nice and then Paris, where he lived with Jeannine in great poverty. He had exhibitions in 1944 and 1945, but success came too late for Jeannine, who died of illnesses resulting from malnutrition in 1946.

De Staël then met and married Françoise Chapouton, and from 1947 began to attract attention, first in Paris and then New York and London. The New York dealer Paul Rosenberg gave de Staël an exclusive contract in 1953, making the artist a commercial and critical success. Prices were raised and more paintings requested even as de Stael himself withdrew into insomnia, self-doubt and depression. He now had four children and an international reputation, but in the autumn of 1954 moved with his family to Antibes, seeking rest and reflection. On March 16, 1955, following a meeting with a disparaging art-critic, he leapt to his death from his eleventh story studio terrace.