Olivier Debre Biography
Paris, France, 1920 - 1999
An established French artist, Oliver Debre studied architecture and history in Paris, for a short time under Le Corbusier. His paintings, completely abstract in the 1940s and 50s, evolved to give way to an ephemeral sense of nature. His pieces exalt color and he was, above all else, a masterful colorist.
His paintings were influenced by his travels and artists whose work he came in contact with. Following the Second World War, he met vanguard painters Serge Poliakoff, Stael, and Soulages. In the 1960s his work exhibited traces of Abstract Expressionism after a trip to the United States were he met Kline, Rothko, and Olitski. He sometimes painted large-format works, using a kind of broom-brush to paint on a canvas spread on the floor.
Debre also did design work, including postage stamps, windows, and sets for various theatres in France and China, as well as frescos at the Abbesses Theatre in Paris. He also experimented with sculpture and illustration, and published a number of essays on the importance of contributing ones vision of the evolution of forms, and proposing a new architecture adapted to the contemporary city.
