Olivier Dassault has always cultivated a passion for photography.
He liked to say that at the age of 7, he had immortalized the Parthenon in Greece, thanks to an Instamatic bought by his parents.
The beginning of his love for this art that will never leave him.
Read also: Disappearance of Olivier Dassault, victim of a helicopter accident
For more than forty years, with his eye glued to its case, Marcel Dassault's grandson was a past master in the art of photographic creation.
He had published about ten books (
Danses de feu, Entre Terre et Ciel
,
Cinquième dimension
...) and his works have often been exhibited in Paris at the W gallery and at the NAG gallery (Not A Gallery), that of his wife, Natasha, in the 16th arrondissement.
In March 2019, it was at the Parisian gallery W, located rue du Grenier Saint-Lazare (Paris 3rd), that he exhibited his latest works.
We saw cut stones, a chess board or textile fibers ...
Olivier Dassault was blurring the lines.
He had sharpened his photographer's eye since his first shots.
So much so that behind the intersecting power supply ducts of the Center Pompidou, he detected pure colors, behind a weaving of clothing, he imagined lines that intertwine in a geometric play, behind the reflection of a window, a shard he hastened to capture.
He thus revealed abstract, geometric and materialist compositions, zooms that turn reality into exceptional pieces, always produced in limited editions of 3 or 5 maximum.
His backlit “photographic paintings” and his totems (photographic plates erected in colored menhirs), oscillated between photography and sculpture with luminous works that he had produced armed with his immutable Minolta XD7.
Olivier Dassault (left) with gallery owner Éric Landau who believes he has lost
“a major artist”
.
Martina Stuben
Olivier Dassault had made the Center Pompidou his favorite subject.
It showed what no one is looking at: the sheaths of electric wires and the thousand details of this monumental modern architecture.
Taking advantage of the sunlight, he evoked the place through modern graphic harmonies.
A set called RéFlexions, which may one day go to Beaubourg.
“We lost a major artist, I just lost a friend.
I think of Natacha his wife, of their complicity, of their love.
Together, they brought the arts and artists to life.
We will continue to present and publish his works, it is the artists' share of immortality ”
, declared Éric Landau, director of the W gallery when the death of Olivier Dassault was announced.
Laurence Dreyfus, Art Advisor also reacts
: “I had agreed to select it in the last edition of
Chambre apart from 2020
at the Kraemer gallery with an enigmatic photo:“ Pilastre ”2018, 160x93 cm.
It's a great loss, a great man open-minded, lively and committed - he loved adventure, he needed adrenaline.
And he crossed the world with a human and empathetic connection.
A respectable man.
From an artistic point of view, his photos made sense.
Carrying a well-known last name is often detrimental in the art world when you want to be an artist - Olivier assumed his functions and his name. ”