Nicolas de Staël

Following the exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne, the major retrospective dedicated to Nicolas de Staël (1914–1955) will be shown at the Fondation de l’Hermitage in Lausanne. Organized chronologically, the exhibition brings together some one hundred paintings, drawings, engravings, and notebooks. Offering a fresh perspective on de Staël’s work, the exhibition presents his best-known paintings alongside a selection of works rarely, in some cases never, shown to the public. Eschewing the myths that have grown around the figure of de Staël, the retrospective instead focuses on the painter at work, in the landscape or in the silence of his studio. Disinterested in the fashions and quarrels of his time, the artist remained fascinated by the world’s spectacles, whether the sea, a soccer match, or a piece of fruit posed on a table. From the dark, textured canvases of the 1940s to the luminous paintings he produced before his suicide in 1955, the exhibition presents his work as an urgent quest for an art that was ever more dense and more concise.