411 - Olivier DEBRÉ (1920–1999)

Olivier DEBRÉ (1920–1999) "Sepia with a Violet Stain," 1969 Oil on canvas Titled, signed, dated, and inscribed "to François and Maylis" on the back of the canvas 55 x 65 cm Framed PROVENANCE: Calais Auction House, Auctioneer Éric Pillon, sale of December 10, 1989. (Some paint loss in the left corners) Description: Son of pediatrician Robert Debré and grandson of painter Édouard Debat-Ponsan, Olivier Debré first studied architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and attended Le Corbusier’s studio before devoting himself to painting in the early 1940s. His repeated encounters with Pablo Picasso influenced his early explorations of the sign. In 1949, his first solo exhibition at the Bing Gallery brought him into contact with Pierre Soulages, Hans Hartung, Gérard Schneider, and Jean-Michel Atlan—major figures in postwar abstraction—and he began participating in the Salon de Mai in 1950. After the “sign-figures” of the 1950s, Debré turned to landscape painting beginning in 1960. Often painted en plein air in Touraine and along the banks of the Loire, his “sign-landscapes” feature broad fields of fluid color, with edges laden with concretions: a “fervent abstraction,” in his own words, through which he said he sought to “create an abstract Courbet .” The work on display, dated 1969, belongs to this period of full artistic maturity. He gained international recognition as early as 1959, with exhibitions at the Knoedler Gallery in New York and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., where he met Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and Jules Olitski. This was followed by the grand stage curtains for the Comédie-Française (1987) and the Hong Kong Opera, then a retrospective at the Jeu de Paume National Gallery in 1995. Elected to the Academy of Fine Arts shortly before his death, he lent his name to the Olivier Debré Center for Contemporary Art in Tours.