Olivier DEBRE (1920-1999) Lot n° 41

Sumndalstgonen blev (bleu du soir), 1971 Oil on panel, monogrammed lower right, signed, dated and titled on reverse 100 x 100 cm 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in. Representative of lyrical abstraction, Olivier Debré is a major French painter. Grandson of the painter Edouard Debat-Ponsan, he receives in 1937, a real artistic shock in front of the Guernica of Picasso's Guernica. This influence will be decisive for the artist, who will abandon the figuration, to devote himself to the abstract expression of the sign, vector of emotions and thought. Graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1938, he seemed to be promised to a career of architect. However, it is in painting that he will express his plastic genius. His artistic culture makes him explore the field of impressionism while his style evolves in the elaboration of the elaboration of larger colored surfaces, making him the first representative of the gestural abstraction gestural. The poetry of his work resides in an immersion rocked by the colors of his peregrinations. A clever mixture of space and light, Olivier Debré's style is the expression of a feeling, an emotion an emotion, which he associates with a particular moment. Thus, the horizon of his works beyond the chromatic range that he embodies in each of his paintings. Here, the two works presented reveal the practically monochromatic shades chosen by the artist to explore the the artist to explore the space of the canvas. Through the cold shades of Olivier Debré's palette, the viewer is the viewer is immersed in the contemplation of the immense detail before him. The style of the style is a synthesis of his mastery of colors, supported by the oscillation of the thicknesses on the canvas, which increases tenfold the format of his works. As a "European Rothko", Olivier Debré would not leave an informed eye unmoved, arousing emotion through gesture.