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Olivier Debré and his contemporaries : lyrical abstraction and post-war networks
Galerie AB – June 24 to July 25

We are presenting an exhibition dedicated to Olivier Debré and his contemporaries, key figures of post-war abstraction: Hans Hartung, André Marfaing, Serge Poliakoff, Roberto Matta, Roger Bissière, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Georges Mathieu, and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva.

This exhibition offers an expanded perspective on lyrical abstraction and Art Informel, two essential movements in pictorial modernity in Europe after 1945. Through these works, a pivotal moment in art history is revisited: that of Paris, once again the international capital of creation, where painters, critics, and gallerists collectively forged a new artistic language.

In the post-war period, abstraction emerged as a decisive break from figurative representation. The artists gathered here each contributed to this artistic revolution in their own way: Georges Mathieu's explosive gesture, Serge Poliakoff's colored fields, Hans Hartung's sensitive structures, Vieira da Silva's mental architectures, and André Marfaing's poetic tensions.

Around them, a network of galleries played a crucial role in the international recognition of these artists. Galerie de France, Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Galerie Denise René, Galerie Stadler, and Galerie Maeght became essential venues for the dissemination of lyrical abstraction and the post-war School of Paris. It was in these spaces that the dialogues, friendships, and sometimes aesthetic confrontations that shaped this generation were woven.

Olivier Debré's work, deeply connected to landscape, never depicts reality descriptively. Instead, it conveys its memory, vibration, light, and emotion. His large colored surfaces thus naturally engage with the explorations of his contemporaries, while asserting a personal, more silent, more meditative path.

The exhibition reveals a tapestry of friendships, encounters, and cross-influences. Debré, Hartung, Poliakoff, Riopelle, and Vieira da Silva do not form a homogeneous group, but rather a constellation of artists united by a shared conviction: painting is a territory of endless experimentation.

Between gesture, color, and space, between memory and sensation, the exhibition "From Olivier Debré to Vieira da Silva" thus invites a rediscovery of post-war abstraction.

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