“All my life, I had a need to think painting,” said the Russian artist Nicolas de Staël, “to paint in order to liberate myself from all the impressions, all the feelings, and all the anxieties of which the only solution I know is painting.” De Staël was born in Saint Petersburg in 1914 and relocated to France in 1938. He moved between abstract compositions of thickly applied paint and elegantly austere landscapes and still lifes. He also suffered from depression. In the early 1950s, demand for de Staël’s work increased dramatically, but success had no effect on his mental state. In 1955, at 41, he committed suicide. This exhibition of 200 drawings, prints, and notebooks is the first on the artist in over 20 years. —Elena Clavarino