Nicolas de Staël (1914-1955)

Painted in 1947, Image à froid is one of the masterpieces from Nicolas de Staël's period of abstraction, as is reflected in its extensive exhibition history. At the highpoint of his abstract phase, which lasted from 1946 to 1948, de Staël had shed the original influences of Jean Arp and Alberto Magnelli, who had initially prompted him to liberate himself from the figurative and the objective. In Image à froid, he has created an idiosyncratic work, filled with the pulsing rhythm that hints at his profound love of music. Through its swirling maelstrom of paint, with bars and streaks of black on one side and greys and ochres on the other, Image à froid creates the impression of a vortex.

By amassing this seemingly self-generating agglomeration of abstract forms, de Staël has managed to conjure a sense of pictorial space, of depth, with the red at the centre appearing like the glowing embers of an expressionistic Big Bang that is hurling the paint outwards in a burst of creativity and creation. This notion is made all the more apt by the sensuality of the paint surface, by the tangible quality of its impasto, a legacy of the vigorous application of the oils with a palette knife and other pieces of metal during this period. Image à froid has an almost organic appearance, with the paint, and the painting, appearing to spring organically into existence from some primordial, lava-like centre.