Nicholas De Stael

Nicholas De Stael Biography:
New York in the 1950s saw the golden years of Abstract Expressionist art, prints and posters. One of the best was Nicholas de Stael. De Stael was born into a Russian noble family in St. Petersburg in 1914, three years before the Bolshevik Revolution. His family left Russia in 1919 and moved first to Poland, where his father died, and finally made its way to Brussels, where de Stael was educated. He spent his early life traveling throughout Europe before settling in Paris. He served in the French Foreign Legion in 1939. After years of hardship and hunger in occupied France, de Stael began to enjoy a post-war public success that eventually led him to move his family to the south of France, away from the pressures of Paris. He purchased a chateau in 1953 at Menerbes in the Vaucluse. He also took a studio in Antibes, which is where, physically and emotionally exhausted, he took his life on Mar. 16, 1955.  >>click here for more