By the time he was 16, De Stael had grown passionate about painting and soon sold a watercolor. Two years after entering the Saint Gilles Academy in Brussels, he began collaborating on frescoes for the Agriculture and Glass Pavilions in Brussels in 1935. That same year he made a trip to Spain, and in 1936 he went to Morocco, where he met and fell in love with a young painter named Jeanne Guillou, already a mother to a little boy who would become known as the poet Antoine Tudal .
He joined the Foreign Legion at the outset of World War II, ending up in Sidi-bel-Abbes, Algeria, and then in Tunisia, making maps for Legion staff. He was demobilized in September, 1940, and returned to Jeanne in Nice, France. Sometime in 1941-42, he made his Portrait of Jeanne but little else apart from a few still lifes. In 1942, his daughter Anne was born , and that year DeStael began to really focus on a new, abstract direction in his art.
He had met Jean Arp and Sonia Delaunay, among other artists, in Nice, and his works in 1943 were free abstract compositions that reflected his discovery of abstract art. In Nice, he supported his efforts by working as a furniture polisher and cabinet maker. He showed his work at a show at Jeanne Bucher's gallery along with works by Wassily Kandinsky. His first private show was held at L'Esquisse gallery in 1944. That year, he also met cubist Georges Braque, who made illustrations for Antoine Tudal.
In 1946, Jeanne Guillou died during an abortion. DeStael at this time was living in conditions of poverty and squalor, and his paintings such as The Lady With the Unicorn and The Apocalypse were ominous works full of violent brush strokes. He soon married Francoise Chapouton, with whom he had three more children.
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