"Les Lumières du Voyage"

Olivier Desvaux invites us on a journey, with stops ranging from the Urals to Greece, from the banks of the Seine to Japan, from the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon to Syracuse, from San Francisco to the Norwegian fjords… A wide variety of landscapes, each a suspended moment in time, from which a timeless poetry emerges.

Olivier Desvaux works within the tradition of oil painting. A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2006 and the recipient of numerous awards, he joined the prestigious circle of Official Painters of the French Navy in 2018.

His studio is located on a bend of the Seine in Normandy, a landscape renowned for its exceptional light. From this daily spectacle, as well as from his countless travels, Olivier Desvaux most often draws his inspiration outdoors, with a particular attraction to natural light and to water—whether it be river, sea, or the mirror-like surface of Lake Baikal.
Olivier Desvaux’s compositions are often structured by architectural lines, but also by a staging of emptiness that gives rhythm to the works and fosters a majestic luminous atmosphere. When figures appear, they seem to float within the vibration of the light, lending them an enigmatic and silent presence.

In the display cases, studies are presented that served as the basis for large-format works created in the studio. These include interior scenes, portraits of loved ones, landscape details, or everyday moments captured in travel sketchbooks, all revealing another facet of his work—observant, intimate, often tender, and always captivating.