Шталь фон Гольштейн, Николай Владимирович

Painter, graphic artist

Born St. Petersburg, 5 January 1914

Died Antibes (France), 16 March 1955

Nikolai Shtal fon Golshtein (Staël von Holstein), known as Nicolas de Staël, was the son of the last commandant iof the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. Because of the Russian Revolution the family emigrated 1919 to Poland where both parents died. Nicolas was sent to Brussels to live with his older sister Marina. In 1932 he studied at the Brussels Academie of Art. During the 1930s he travelled through Europe and the Mahreb and lived in Paris and Morocco. In 1941 he moved to Nice where he met Jean Arp and Sonia and Robert Delaunay who would inspire his first abstract paintings. In the fall of 1954 he and his family moved to Antibes in the south of France. Due to his mental condition he committed suicide in 1955, aged 41.

1961, 1963, 1966

1976

1982, 1984, 1990

2006

2010

2011-12