Yellow and Green Rectangles 1951
Nicolas de STAËL (Russia/1914-France/1955)
oil on canvas 129.7x97.4cm
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Shades of yellow,
green, and red intermingle with each other, shattering the calm serenity
of the grid-like arrangement of rectangles. The thickly applied paint
conveys an image seething with materiality, giving a sense of motion
to the calm compositional structure. This delicate intermingling of
the "static" and the "active" makes this painting
a fascinating work of art. Born into the Russian nobility, De Staël
fled his homeland during the Russian Revolution and lived out his
life as a painter in Southern France. The majority of his oeuvre consists
of abstract paintings; from 1952 onward, however, he also began to
develop a representational style of painting. This work was created
in 1951, just prior to his stylistic shift to the representational,
and therefore may be regarded in some ways to be the culmination of
de Staël's abstract painting style. |
