From his youth, Olivier Debré cultivated the habit of painting directly in nature, often photographed at work amidst the landscape. In 1965, during Christmas at Argentière near Mont-Blanc, he created Pale bleu d’Argentière (work below), a work that reflects both his return to softer tonalities and his refusal to be a mere landscapist. As he affirmed, he did not paint the landscape itself but the emotion it stirred within him. The pale blue that dominates the canvas thus becomes less a record of place than a lyrical abstraction, where the painter’s inner self merges with the atmosphere around him.

Executed in his favored square format (100 x 100 cm), the painting reveals fluid, diluted brushstrokes counterbalanced by denser passages of pigment. Debré spoke of the moment when “something crystallizes in the very substance of the paint—that is the reality of the emotion, and it is within me.”

Pale bleu d’Argentière marks a turning point: emancipated from a more rigid abstraction, Debré experimented with contrasts of matter and subtle harmonies of tone, making this canvas a key testimony to the evolution of his style.