The city of Rueil-Malmaison, Atelier Grognard, and Natacha Dassault are paying tribute to photographer Olivier Dassault through the exhibition "Inspirations: Abstract Expressions." This comprehensive showcase presents the artistic legacy of the renowned French photographer, featuring approximately sixty silver gelatin photographs created over more than 40 years of his career.
The exhibition marks a return to Atelier Grognard, where Dassault previously held what he considered his most significant exhibition in November 2017. That show, titled "Grand Angle, from Figurative to Abstraction," featured more than one hundred photographs and represented his first major exhibition at the venue. He often spoke of it as his greatest exhibition, making this posthumous tribute particularly meaningful.
The current exhibition opens with an illustrated biography revealing Dassault's artistic journey, titled "A Life of an Artist: Over 50 Years of Photography." His complete body of work is characterized as abundant, eclectic, and resolutely abstract. His artistic approach remained a permanent and completely improvised dialogue with light, driven by an energy to bring people together and create emotions while expressing himself in complete freedom.
"Art seems to me today a means, if not the means, to reconsider our world, to reflect on its essence, to experience the deep truth that would have escaped us, and to do it TOGETHER," Dassault wrote in Paris in 2020. This philosophy guided his artistic vision throughout his career, emphasizing the collective power of art to transform understanding and perception.
In 2016, Olivier and Natacha Dassault established NAG, Not a Gallery, a dedicated art space where his photographs were often presented in dialogue with works by other artists during collective exhibitions. He particularly enjoyed these creative dialogues and collaborative presentations. Following this tradition, Natacha Dassault has chosen to exhibit certain artists in a scenography that resonates with Olivier Dassault's "Abstract Expressions." The featured artists include Griet Van Malderen, Fuad Kapidzic, Kouka, Hom Nguyen, Jonone, Rancinan, and Isabelle Girollet.
Beyond photography, Dassault was also a musician, related to the famous French composer Darius Milhaud (1892-1974). He composed original film scores in his early career and later reinvented sonic emblems by creating more than one hundred hymns for companies, institutions, and major events. Excerpts of these compositions will be played during the exhibition, adding an auditory dimension to the visual experience.
The exhibition also serves as an opportunity to present the Olivier Dassault Endowment Fund, created by his wife Natacha. This fund is dedicated to ensuring the conservation, dissemination, and promotion of photographer Olivier Dassault's work and the artistic movement in which he participated. "A gleam that draws the curves of a subject, this is the visual poetry that Olivier loved to capture. From this ray was born a variable geometry according to inspiration and gesture. For him, the essential thing was the encounter with light. The man who laughed with his eyes loved to sculpt light. I like to believe that his light remains," said Natacha Dassault.
Photography imposed itself on Olivier Dassault as a true revelation from adolescence. Faithful to his Minolta XD7 camera, this multifaceted man devoted part of his life to capturing moments on silver film. From beginner competitions to travels around the world, everything became material for exercising his eye, perfecting his technique, and conceptualizing his approach. Over more than 40 years, his work developed from instantaneous abstractions to improvised compositions through multiple exposures and superimpositions at the moment of shooting.
Progressively, he freed himself from the constraints of realism and explored color and form as sources of creation. As an avid traveler, he loved to absorb the ineffable energy of places and familiar objects, creating unique and captivating visual compositions exclusively in silver gelatin. By observing his surroundings, Dassault approached the origin of elements, with his pilot's eye and engineering training leading him to perceive and compose images between verticality and horizontality, making his work uniquely distinctive.
He photographed everywhere, wherever he found himself. Through his reinvented chances, he created connections and a form of freedom of language that allowed him to compose and redesign with infinite consciousness. The process of revealing the image and its format depended on the emotion it evoked, delivering all its light and depth. His approach remained a quest of obsessive reflections toward the ultimate and unprecedented shot.
Dassault's photographs have been exhibited worldwide, from Paris to New York, from Madrid to Marrakech, from London to Brussels. His works are included in the catalogs of several museums and institutions, including the National Library of France, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, and the Palm Springs Art Museum in California. In 2023, his work joined the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, cementing his place in the contemporary art canon.
While Olivier Dassault served as a deputy in the National Assembly and held high positions within the Dassault Group, it is his artistic career that truly distinguished him. His "iconic confessions" attest to his mischievous spirit, sensitivity, and the virtuosity of his gesture. "Painting light remains my credo," he used to say. Every work bears witness to a fragment of life where light harmonizes with matter and invites us to appreciate the beauty of the world and preserve it. The fleeting image freezes in motionless eternity.
Chantal Dusserre-Bresson serves as the exhibition's curator. "Olivier Dassault: Inspirations: Abstract Expressions" runs until November 16, 2025, at Atelier Grognard, located at 6, avenue du Château de Malmaison, 92500 Rueil-Malmaison. The exhibition represents both a celebration of Dassault's artistic legacy and a continuation of his vision of art as a means of collective understanding and emotional connection.
