STAËL NICOLAS DE (1913-1955) Signed autograph letter to a printer or publisher. S.l.n.d., 2 pages in-4 in ink on Sudoka imitation japanese. Rare letter from one of the most important post-war French painters: "[...] I have signed a "bon à Tirer" for a black lithograph, which Dejobert [Desjobert, lithograph printer in Paris] erased a year ago, it seems. Here we are again without anything... [...] Of course it would be easy to take a layer and redo the stone without faith. But I feel committed after several misunderstandings and cannot deny you a job you are hoping for. Give me some time. I'll give you a colored board if it's not totally (?) impossible for you to keep in touch without a third party. On the other hand, I will be able to answer you precisely about the title we talked about as soon as my dealer returns from New York [...]". Here he tells a printer or publisher that he does not want to redo a lithograph that has already been used. De Staël had a tragic end; the painter had committed suicide. Coming from a prestigious line of Baltic barons, the Stael-Holsteins, military aristocrats of northern Russia, he was a page at the court of the tzar when he was a child. His family emigrated during the Russian Revolution, shortly after 1917. De Staël apprenticed as a painter in Brussels before settling in France. Demobilized in 1940, he met Sonia Delaunay, Le Corbusier, Jean Arp, Magnelli, which allowed him to confront his painting with abstraction.