Nicolas de Staël (1914-1955) Portrait of René Char (Frontispiece for R. Char, Arrière-histoire du poème pulvérisé, Paris, J. Hugues, 1953). Lithograph. [115 x 160]. F. Woimant and A. de Staël 1422. Printed in colours. A very fine proof on white vellum, separate from the edition of 100 proofs for the book (plus 20 hors-commerce), annotated "Epreuve" and signed in pencil. Full margins. Framed. Nicolas de Staël and René Char were close friends. They met in February 1951 at the painter's home, 7 rue Gauguet (Paris 14th), through Georges Duthuit (1891-1973), an art historian and critic and Henri Matisse's son-in-law. November 1951 saw the publication of Poèmes, a collection illustrated with fourteen woodcuts and a lithograph by the painter. René Char chose thirteen prose poems from Poème pulvérisé, published in 1947, to respond to the painter's engravings. On 8 November 1951, Staël wrote to Char: "I can never tell you enough what it has given me to work for you. You immediately made me rediscover the passion I had as a child for big skies, leaves in autumn, and all the nostalgia for a direct, unprecedented language that that entails. Tonight I have a thousand unique books in my two hands for you, I may never make them, but it's really good to have them. (Quoted in F. de Staël, Nicolas de Staël, catalogue raisonné des œuvres sur papier, Paris, Ides et Calendes, 2013, p. 539). In 1953, Nicolas de Staël turned to collage, at a time when his work was changing. The radical nature of this research was combined with experiments in illustration, which offered him extreme graphic simplification. "That same year, 1953, Staël produced a Portrait of René Char, used as a lithograph for a frontispiece to L'Arrière-histoire du poème pulvérisé, in which he simply superimposed the white cut-out of an effigy on a red halo set against a purplish-blue background. We are reminded of plates VII (The Heart) and XVI (Destiny) of Matisse's Jazz, but also of Jean-Claude Marcadé's insistence on the Orthodox influence: "Like his friend Lanskoy, Staël saw the colours singing in the icon. With Staël, this singing of colours in its very economy [...], in its asceticism, is as close as possible to iconic representation. The result is a totally original synthesis, probably unique in twentieth-century art: French restraint and balance in an iconic aura". (G. Viatte, "Introduction", in F. de Staël, op. cit., p. 24).