- En savoir plus
- L'auteur
Slavik ruled Paris for almost half a century until the turn of the 2000s.
Born in 1920, Wiatscheslav Vassilieff, a Russian emigrant, studied at the National School of Decorative Arts and at Idhec before collaborating as a decorator with Cassandre, Jacques Adnet and Serge Lifar.
Noted for his work as a painter with surrealist accents, he became a decorator at Galeries Lafayette from 1943 and was charged in 1954 by Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet with directing the industrial aesthetics department that he had just created at Publicis. Following the success of the Drugstore des Champs-Élysées (1958), Saint-Germain-des-Prés (1965), and the Pub Renault (1963), for which he designed the spaces and decoration, from 1968 he dedicated himself to the development of restaurants, bistros, brasseries, pubs, bars, night clubs, stores and boutiques. The Richard, Bras, Taittinger and Sfez families called on him. A poetic-commercial designer, he created more than three hundred decors, in France and abroad, in which he mixed Art Nouveau inspiration, Slavic spirit, Anglo-Saxon influences and modernity, with joyful eclecticism. With Michel Oliver, he designed popular restaurant chains, such as L'Assiette au Boeuf, which democratized quality and beauty. The Jules Verne of the Eiffel Tower, created in collaboration with the architect Jean-Jacques Loup, Le Bistrot de Paris, the Winston Churchill Pub, the London Tavern, the Lutetia brasserie and restaurant, and Le Dôme will be landmarks for decades as essentials of Parisian life.
Pascal Bonafoux is a writer and journalist, and he teaches art history at the University of Paris VIII. A specialist in Rembrandt and self-portraits, he is the author of numerous essays on art including Me, I by oneself, Self-Portrait in the 20th century, Éditions Diane de Selliers, 2004, and Portraits de Rembrandt, Seuil, 2019.
Peter Knapp is a fashion photographer and graphic designer. He was also artistic director of Galeries Lafayette, and of numerous magazines including Nouveau Femina and Elle.
Margo Rouard Snowman is a design and graphics historian. She was an exhibition curator at the CCI of the Center Pompidou, professor of visual communication at Ensad and director of the Agency for the Promotion of Creation. She is the author of numerous books and articles.
Géraldine Cerf de Dudzeele, Slavik's last companion, is a psychoanalyst.
Philippe Maynial is a producer and scriptwriter. He is the author of Madeleine Pauliac L'Insoumise, XO éditions, 2017, which led to the feature film Les Innocentes by Anne Fontaine and the historical documentary Les Filles de l'Escadron bleu directed by Emmanuelle Nobécourt (Prix Historia 2020).
Text in French only