Ceysson & Bénétière

Born in 1920, in Paris, France 

Dead in 1999, in Paris, France. 

   Presentation

Olivier Debré began his learning and practice of drawing, painting and sculpture, very early, transmitted and  influenced by his grand father, the painter Edouard Debat-Ponsan. In 1939, he joined the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Paris in the architecture section and was a student of Le Corbusier. From his training in architecture, he retains an important concern for space in his pictorial work.  He will even say later: "Painting is an organization of space". In 1949, he exhibited at the gallery of Georges Aubry where he met Picasso. In 1942-1943, the many visits he made to the workshop of the Spanish master influenced his work. Since then, he seeks to arouse emotion through his paintings without using representation. Olivier Debré produced his first abstract paintings in 1943 and begins to work on the sign, which for him is the embodiment of emotion and thought while being the bearer of the reality. In 1949, the Bing Gallery presented the painter's first personal exhibition. There, he met artists like Michel Atlan, Pierre Soulages and Hans Hartung. From 1959, he painted the famous series of character signs. Then, at the beginning of the sixties, after a trip in the United states of America where he met artists of abstract expressionism (including Rothko, Kline, Olitski), he resumed landscape painting, painting large colored canvases in nature, following his emotions and sensations in the face of contemplation. In 1967, he represented France at the Universal Exhibition in Montreal. The artist travels a lot in the following decade and especially in Norway. In 1987, he made the stage curtain for the Comédie Française, then in 1989, one for Hong Kong Opera and another for the New Shanghai Opera in 1998. In 1997, he also made costumes and sets for the ballet "Signes" created by the Opéra de Paris and whose choreographer was Carolyn Carlson. Debré has also illustrated many books. In Tours, the Contemporary Creation Center Olivier Debré regularly presents the artist's work in resonance with contemporary creations, thus continuing to bring Olivier Debré's work to life.

Olivier Debré has always been on the fringes of the main lines of a simplistic art history that likes to use convenient labels, like those of first-year university textbooks that classify artists according to their distinctive signs - figuration versus abstraction, geometric abstraction, lyrical abstraction, informal painting - but which does not know what to make of a painter who claims the affirmation of the surface as a field of colour and the work on the sign, without giving up sensation. 

As Milena Glicenstein reminds us in her essay, the Nouvelle École de Paris, whose boundaries have the advantage of being very fluid, provided a framework for his early career, which saw him evolve from post-impressionism to abstraction under the influence of Picasso. 

After the traumas of the war, about which he remained sufficiently discreet throughout his life for the exhibition of his drawings from 1945-1960 to constitute a real discovery for critics and the public when they were presented in 1990, his art followed paths parallel to those of his European and American peers, in a post-war period which was fascinated by the American all-over of Pollock and Rothko and which did not often see the kinship between all these works. 

(...)

He owes the fullness of his style to his large compositions - the Signes-paysages - in which the Loire occupies a predominant place. The material becomes fluid like the water that flows over the canvases that he sometimes leaves outside at dusk when it is no longer possible to paint. 

The impasto becomes the very material of the landscape, which is invited by the twigs and sand that settle on his paintings. In this respect, the works donated by the artist during his lifetime to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours are quite revealing of the intrinsic link between Debré and his Loire. Attached to Touraine, he often visited the Musée des Beaux-Arts, where he wandered through the rooms, enjoying the fact that his works were in the heart of this two hundred year old collection, in the gold of the former archbishop's palace. Sophie Join-Lambert likes to recall his availability and kindness towards the museum team and the students he met there. In the recording of the interview retranscribed in this book, we can hear his humility and his concern to be understood by his interlocutor, who constantly reassures him of the quality of his speech. 

Hélène Jagot, extract from tes book Olivier Debré, l'abstraction fervente, LIENART éditions, 2021

Main exhibitions and orders 

2021

Étendue, corps, espace. Olivier Debré et les artistes architectes, group shows,  Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré (CCCOD), Tours

2020

Olivier Debré, signes personnages, solo show, Abbaye du Mont-Saint-Michel, festival "Normandie Impressionniste"

2020

La Peinture à l'épreuve, solo show, Centre d'art Le Garage à Amboise

Signes Personnages, exposition collective itinérante, Tours Métropole 

2019

Les Nymphéas d'Olivier Debré, solo show, Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré (CCCOD), Tours 

2017 

Olivier Debré : un voyage en Norvège, solo show, Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré (CCCOD), Tours 

2013 

« Olivier Debré, signes-personnages, signes-paysages », Musée des Beaux-Arts, Carcassonne

2009

1945-1949 Repartir à zéro, comme si la peinture n’avait jamais existé - Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Lyon 

CORTE/50 - MAMM - Museo de Arte Moderno Medellin, Medellín

arte & natura - Museo Villa dei Cedri, Bellinzona

2008 

Signe Ecriture Signe - MAMAC Musée d´Art Moderne et Contemporain, Liège 

The Story Goes On – Contemporary Artists in the Wake of Van Gogh - MODEM Centre for Modern and Contemporary Arts, Debrecen

2007

« Olivier Debré, grands formats », Musée des Beaux-Arts, Angers 

Hommage à André Marfaing - les Abattoirs de Toulouse, Toulouse

Gestes, signes, traces, espaces - Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, Caen

Auktion 25 - Lehr - Auktionshaus und Galerie, Berlin 

Hommage à l´Atelier Lacourière-Frélaut - Galerie Michèle Broutta, Paris

2005 

Réouverture du LAAC - LAAC - Lieu d'Art et Action Contemporaine de Dunkerque, Dunkerque

2003 

Un jardin secret - Collection Monique Dorsel et Emile Lanc - Centre de la Gravure et de l'Image imprimée, La Louvière

« Olivier Debré. Peintures », galerie Louis Carré & Cie, Paris

« Olivier Debré. Œuvres de la dation », Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

2000

« Hommage à Olivier Debré. Peintures de 1963 à 1990 », Centre d’Arts Plastiques, Royan

1999 

Kunst und Demokratie Widerstand und Freiheit - Galerie Carinthia, Klagenfurt

1998 – L’artiste crée le rideau de scène de l’Opéra de Shanghai

1998 

Beyond Image – A Retrospective of Olivier Debre - Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, SA

Usporednosti - 12 Francuskih Umjetnika - Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik, Dubrovnik

1996 

Grabado Francés - MADC Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, San José 

Acquisitions Récentes Du Musée National D'histoire Et D'art - Casino Luxembourg - Forum d'art contemporain, Luxembourg

1995 

« Olivier Debré » (rétrospective), galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris

1994 

Le quart d’heure américain - FRAC - Bourgogne, Dijon

1993 

Entre la sérénité et l'inquiétude - Musée d'Art moderne de Saint-Etienne, Saint-Etienne

« Olivier Debré, rétrospective, 1943-1993 » (rétrospective itinérante),Théâtre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Montbéliard / Valence / Ajaccio, Musée Fesch / Montigny-le- Bretonneux 

1991

Tours, CCC, « Olivier Debré. Quatre tableaux »

1990

« Debré. Dessins, 1945-1960 », Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Saint-Denis

1989 – Debré réalise le rideau de scène de l’Opéra de Hong Kong

1987 – Paris, rideau de scène de la Comédie-Française

1984 

Olivier Debré - Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris

« Olivier Debré. Grands formats (1982-1984) », Pavillon des Arts, Paris 

1980

« Olivier Debré » (rétrospective), Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tours

1979 

« Olivier Debré. Œuvres récentes », galerie Daniel Templon, Paris

1976 

« Olivier Debré », Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes

1975 - Chinon, Lycée Rabelais - Debré réalise une grande toile

1975 

« Olivier Debré » (rétrospective), Musée d’Art et d’Industrie / Maison de la Culture, Saint-Étienne

1971 – Olivier Debré exécute deux grandes toiles à la commande de la Ville d’Amboise

1970 - Osaka, Pavillon de l’Europe, Exposition Internationale – création d’une céramique monumentale inaugurée le 15 mars

1968

« Olivier Debré peintures », Musée Galliera, Paris

1967 

« Expo 67. Terre des hommes », pavillon français de l’Exposition Inter- nationale, Montréal

1967- Exécution d’une peinture monumentale dans le hall du bâtiment conçu par l’architecte Jean Faugeron (Signe d’homme, 250 x 500 cm)

1966 - Créteil, Maison des Jeunes Travailleurs - création d’une grande peinture

1966 

« Olivier Debré. Peintures 1943-1966 » (première rétrospective en institution publique),Musée des Beaux-Arts, Le Havre 

1965 – Collège de Royan (architectes : Guillaume Gilet et Bernard Cayla) - dans le cadre du 1% artistique, création de deux grandes toiles décoratives pour l’internat

1960 

Solo show, Galerie Knoedler, Paris

1959

Solo show, Knoedler Gallery, New York

1956 

Solo show, Galerie Michel Warren, Paris

1949 

Solo show, Galerie Bing, Paris

Bibliography (selection)

2013

Harambourg Lydia, Olivier Debré, Ides et Calendes

2007

De Chassey Eric, Olivier Debré, Expressions contemporaines

1999

Debré Olivier, Espace pensé, espace créé, le signe progressif, Le cherche Midi éditeur

1998

Christensen Haaken-A, Olivier Debré - Debré et la Norvège, Fragments Editions

1996

Debré Olivier, La marche de Mme Ouvrard

Debré Olivier, La couleur des mots, Le cherche Midi éditeur

1993

Pernoud Emmanuel, Olivier Debré, Les estampes et les livres illustrés (1945-1991), Éditions de La Sorbonne

1992

Coppel Georges, Debré Olivier, Guitet James, Silbermann Jean-Claude, Kallos Paul, Le hasard et la rigueur,  Du Griffon eds

1991

Cabanne Pierre, Debré, Éditions Cercle d'art

1987

Debré Olivier, L'espace et le comportement, L'échoppe Eds

Debré Olivier, Le rideau de la Comédie-Française, Garamont - Archimbaud

1984

Bernard Noël, Debré, Flammarion

1975

Ponnau Dominique, Ceysson Bernard, Olivier Debré, Musée d'art et d'industrie/ Maison de la Culture et des Loisirs,