Composition de Couleurs. Study in Colour. by Nicolas De Stael, 1914-1955

Nicolas De Stael, 1914-1955
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Composition de Couleurs. Study in Colour.

Original lithograph in four colours. 1951. Signed and dated in pencil. Numbered in pencil from the edition of 35 impressions only (31/35). Inscribed at the lower sheet edge in another hand: 'Study in Color No 1'. Printed at the studio of Jean Pons, Paris 1951. First exhibited Galerie Jean Bucher 1951. Edition not formally issued. Very rare.
Ref: Bibliothèque Nationale - De Stael L'Oeuvre Gravé no 93.

Very fine impression with strong colours. On pale cream wove Rives paper. Excellent condition; just the faintest hint of time toning of the sheet. Full margins. Sheet: 19 3/4 x 25 3/4ins. Image: 10 5/8 x 18 7/8ins (270x480mm).

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'Composition de Couleurs' by De Stael is one of the most important and rarest prints by any of the 'colour abstract' painters who made Paris the centre of avant-garde painting in the decade after the War. De Stael made only six major colour lithographs, all in very small editions. He almost never issued formal editions, merely giving or selling the odd impression to his artist or writer friends or patrons. The edition of 'Composition de Couleurs' was just 35 impressions.

De Stael was one of the most creative and influential painters of the circle in Paris just after the War who developed the concept of an abstract treatment of space and plane dependent on relationships of colour and stroke. This concept of the use of abstract colour forms had developed from the ideas of Mondrian and the 'De Stijl' movement and from painters like the Delaunays, as well as from artists like Kandinsky, whom De Stael had met in 1944. It was in the years of the 1950's that some of the most lyrically beautiful pure abstract colour works were created, with De Stael at the forefront of the movement.

An interest in printmaking had first come to De Stael around 1946. Always very interested in literature, writers like René Char encouraged the link between printmaking and books, and it was this that led De Stael to try graphic media for larger scale individual works. His experiments in colour lithography, like 'Composition de Couleurs', show his extreme sensitivity to soft tone values, whilst the medium of lithography allowed him to exploit variations in brushed strokes of ink.

We have only ever seen one other impression of this lithograph on the market in the past 20 years.