Russian born, Nicolas de Stael achieved much prominence in France and the United States in the late 1940s and 1950s. During the 15 years, which were the height of his career, he completed about 1000 paintings, with many of them Abstractions tied to Abstract Expressionism and Lyrical Abstraction, but others later in his career were closer to Realism. On his earlier abstract work, he used a palette knife, applying paint heavily, and worked to achieve contrasting effects of light and dark. "Typically his paintings contained block-like slabs of colour, emerging as if struggling against one another across the surface of the image." However, his later paintings had thin applications of paint, and were much more subdued th...