Nicolas de Stäel was born on January 1914 in St-Petersburg. As an orphan, he lives with an adoption family in Bruxels from 1922. He studies at the Royal Academy for Science and Arts in Belgium in 1932. He travels trough Europe in the 1930’s and joins the Foreign Legion until 1941. Since 1942, de Stäel passes from a classical and figurative work to a radical abstraction painting. He works with oil paste with cuts and trowels. He settles in Nizza where he meets Alberto Magnelli, Jean Arp, Sonia and Robert Delaunay who give him inspiration for his first abstract works, the Compositions. During World War Two, de Stäel meets Georges Braque. He had his first personal exhibition in 1944 with Kandinsky and Magnelli. While he knew a huge success in the United States and in England during the 1950’s, he settled in the south of France then in Antibes where he committed suicide on March 1955.