A family and a Loire
Nephew of Michel Debré, Olivier Debré studied architecture at the Beaux-Arts before taking up painting. The Loire, Touraine and Anjou became its interior climate. He does not imitate the river: he makes « landscape signs », vast colored beaches where the emotion of a place passes without description. Less theatrical than Mathieu, less black than Soulages, he seeks a breath.
From the easel to the opera curtain
Debré paints winter in white-blue, summer in ochre, evening in red. White Winter Blue (54 × 73 cm) from your inventory is an intimate format; by contrast, it creates immense curtains for Hong Kong, Shanghai, the Shanghai Opera. He represents France at the Venice Biennale, teaches at the School of Fine Arts. Color is not decorative: it is temperature and duration.
A climate abstraction
Died in 1999, Debré left a work that is now very present in museums and on sale. It offers, in a collection, the silence after Combas or Erró: a winter, a shore, a light without anecdote.
