Composition (Red)
- Date
- 1950
- Material
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Collection
- Modern and Contemporary Art
- Current Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 31 3/4 x 39 1/8 in. (80.6 x 99.4 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer Jr.
- Rights
- © Nicolas de Staël Estate/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
- Object Number
- 350:1955
NOTES
In this complex painting, blocks of warm vermilion and brick red offset cooler tones of gray-blue, ochre, and white. Nicolas de Staël’s composition of interlocking shapes is built up in thick layers of paint, applied with a palette knife. De Staël was a Russian émigré who became a central figure in the School of Paris, a group committed to exploring abstract forms in the 1940s–50s. De Staël committed suicide at the age of forty-one.
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