PARIS.- To coincide with the centenary of the birth of Nicolas de Staël (1914-55), Sotheby’s announced the sale of his impressive 1950 Composition, last shown in public at the Pompidou Centre’s De Staël retrospective in 2003. This monumental oil on canvas (6ft 7in x 13ft 1in) will be one of the highlights in the Contemporary Art Evening Sale on June 3.

This spectacular work was the largest canvas De Staël had ever painted when it was bought by Denys Sutton (1917-91) in 1950. It has remained in Sutton’s family ever since.

Denys Sutton was an accomplished and committed British art critic who edited Apollo magazine for over 25 years, and also curated numerous landmark exhibitions (devoted to Constable, Picasso, Matisse among others) in the 1960s and ’70s. Sutton met De Staël in Paris at the end of the 1940s, and convinced him to show his works in England. De Staël duly went to London in the summer of 1950, and wrote about being electrified by the city’s light and space.

De Staël was then at a crossroads in his career, and this painting counts as a key stage in his evolution as a painter – one that saw him replace his previous thick, intermeshing lines with the broad, simple expanses of paint that helped this painting breathe. Composition is his most monumental work, just after The Concert (1955) in the Picasso Museum in Antibes.

Nicolas de Staël was well aware of the change in his creative approach, noting: ‘I think we can say that my way of suggesting space in painting is totally new.’3 Composition 1950 stands out as a tour de force that majestically embodies his new technique and offers a perfect synthesis of his different styles of painting. Three years of feverish, passionate work enabled his painting to acquire its exceptional, dense and velvety matter.

The work’s appearance on the market coincides with the centenary of De Staël’s birth. From June to November, two exhibitions – at the Musée Malraux in Le Havre and Musée Picasso in Antibes – will pay tribute to an artist who continues to enjoy great popularity in the United States and throughout Europe, as well as in his adopted France. Sotheby’s is joining in this vibrant homage by offering his monumental Composition 1950 for sale in Paris. It is a rare event for such an unquestionable masterpiece to appear at auction.