Letters 1926-1955.
The Sound of Time.| N° d'inventaire | 25616 |
| Format | 13.5 x 20.5 |
| Détails | 736 p., paperback with flaps under dust jacket. |
| Publication | 2016 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782358730983 |
This volume brings together all of the artist's letters known to date (more than 200 are unpublished). It now constitutes the reference edition of this correspondence, of which André Chastel was able to write, recently, that it "delivers in a way the autobiography of the painter, in the very rhythm of life, of which no account would be capable of restoring the power and pride."
What was true of their first edition, still partial in 1968, is even more so today, with the addition of numerous intimate letters: those to Françoise Chapouton, his second wife, but also all those which had been kept by Jeanne Polge, for whom he felt a devouring passion and whose reading sheds new light on his last years.
Germain Viatte's commentaries and notes help to situate the context in which the letters were written and allow this book to be read as the most complete and illuminating of biographies.
But these letters are much more than a fascinating document about one of the great painters of the last century; they are also—as Thomas Augais shows in his afterword—the letters of a true writer. From adolescence onward, Nicolas de Staël reveals himself concerned, by distrusting words, by inventing a direct language, to capture, as in his paintings, the reality that he perceives with the intensity of what is absolutely simple.
This volume brings together all of the artist's letters known to date (more than 200 are unpublished). It now constitutes the reference edition of this correspondence, of which André Chastel was able to write, recently, that it "delivers in a way the autobiography of the painter, in the very rhythm of life, of which no account would be capable of restoring the power and pride."
What was true of their first edition, still partial in 1968, is even more so today, with the addition of numerous intimate letters: those to Françoise Chapouton, his second wife, but also all those which had been kept by Jeanne Polge, for whom he felt a devouring passion and whose reading sheds new light on his last years.
Germain Viatte's commentaries and notes help to situate the context in which the letters were written and allow this book to be read as the most complete and illuminating of biographies.
But these letters are much more than a fascinating document about one of the great painters of the last century; they are also—as Thomas Augais shows in his afterword—the letters of a true writer. From adolescence onward, Nicolas de Staël reveals himself concerned, by distrusting words, by inventing a direct language, to capture, as in his paintings, the reality that he perceives with the intensity of what is absolutely simple.