Seeing Nicolas de Staël

The "one sale, one work" format has been hitting the mark for quite a while now. This time, the work is the 1949 painting,  Composition by Nicolas de Staël (1914–1955), the flamboyant prince of mid-20th-century painting, whose title betrays nothing of the artist’s inner torment. It was owned by the poet-publisher Pierre Lecuire (1922–2013). A rather moving photograph, reproduced in the catalogue, shows him sitting in front of the work hanging on a wall of his p aris flat. The painter…