Olivier Debré (1920–1999) occupies an essential place in the history of twentieth-century French painting. Associated with lyrical abstraction, he developed very early a profoundly personal approach to painting, at a distance from any school in the strict sense. Coming from an environment attuned to creation, he was the grandson of the painter Édouard Debat-Ponsan, he trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, notably in Le Corbusier's studio. But it was by quickly emancipating himself from architecture that he affirmed his total commitment to painting, which he conceived as a space of experience rather than of representation.
