Paul Debast (1960) - Archipel

Very beautiful original abstract painting by Paul Debast, signed “P. DEBAST” bottom left.

A particularly luminous work, it is made up of a multitude of irregular shapes interlocked with one another, in a wonderful color palette: blue, yellow, red, green, orange, pink, ochre, brown, gray, white and black.

The painting is applied with a lot of material. The flat washes have a very pronounced relief, with the traces of the painting process still clearly visible, which gives the work a presence and a depth that photographs can hardly fully convey. The surface also changes with the light.

The composition almost functions like an abstract puzzle: each shape seems to fit into the next, without a drawn contour, only through the clash of colors. Despite the great chromatic variety, the whole remains very balanced. It is a joyful and very graphic painting, which works particularly well in a contemporary, vintage, or modernist interior.

Paul Debast, born in 1960, is a artist today referenced on the art market for his abstract compositions. Several of his paintings are notably presented by Galerie Montbaron in Madrid, specialized in modern and old art. In Debast’s catalogued works one finds the same vocabulary of free geometric shapes, bold colors and thickly applied paint.

The gallery describes, for example, his work as a kind of “intuitive geometry,” in which the color planes organize themselves to constitute the very structure of the work. This description matches this present painting particularly well: it is not gestural abstraction, but a true construction by color, where each area seems to find its place in relation to the others.