Nicolas de Staël – “Parc des Princes”, 1952. Estimate: €18-25 million
Nicolas de Staël masterpiece at Christie’s On 17 October during the week of FIAC (International Contemporary Art Fair), Christie’s France will auction ‘Parc des Princes’ by Nicolas de Staël with an estimate of €18,000,000-25,000,000.]]>
August 20, 2019, source: Christie’s
The monumental painting has remained in the family of Nicolas de Staël since his passing in 1955, and constitutes a key element in the history of post-war art.
Completed in the spring of 1952, this large-scale painting (200x350cm) marks the zenith of the series of soccer players, which Nicolas de Staël painted after attending the France-Sweden match with his wife, on the evening of 26 March 1952, in the renowned Parisian stadium. In the spotlight, the beauty of the interaction between the players proved a striking scene for the artist, who immediately began working on figurative compositions executed with his palette knife.
It is more the forms and colors of the soccer players’ movements rather than the physical performance which interested De Staël, a rising figure in abstraction at the time. The detachment with which he viewed his models led him to a deliberate schematisation of the subject. This brief but nonetheless intense period of creation marked a turning point with the artist using a more colourful chromatic palette whilst moving away from the impasto that had characterised his work thus far. De Staël was at the peak of his career and the resulting works were a stunning synthesis between abstraction and figuration. In this way, he brought an innovative and original response to the 20th century’s pictorial and esthetical issues.
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