EMILE SAVITRY | PHOTOGRAPHER

EMILE SAVITRY (1903-1967) 

un photographe de Montparnasse

Émile Savitry (1903-1967), a little known photographer during the “racy days” of Montparnasse, mingled with the international artists and intellectuals that Paris had to offer from 1930 to 1950. The incredible success of his first exhibition of surrealist paintings, introduced by Aragon in 1929, provoked this modest gentleman to flee to Tahiti with Georges Malkine. Upon returning, he discovered Django Reinhardt in the port city of Toulon and brought him to Paris to discover jazz. 

He would meet magnificent people at the Dôme and La Coupole cafés in the Vavin neighborhood including the Prévert brothers, Paul Grimault, Anaïs Nin, Alberto Giacometti, Anton Prinner, Victor Brauner, Óscar Domínguez. With Brassaï then Robert Doisneau, he engaged in a photography career at the Rapho agency. He would become a reporter, immortalizing Spanish Republican war refugees as well as the residents of the Pigalle neighborhood, he would become a set photographer for Marcel Carné for Les Portes de la nuit and La Fleur de l’âge, a fashion photographer for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, before returning to painting. His intimate artist’s portraits and nudes that were a wild success in Japan were testimony to his profound sensitivity. Victim of a sudden illness, Émile Savitry, “too alive to consider himself an artist”, died prematurely, in 1967. Today, his abundant works deserve to be honored.

Émile Savitry est le nom d'artiste d'Émile Dupont, peintre et photographe français, né le 21 janvier 1903 à Saïgon à l'époque de l'Indochine française. Il est le fils de Félix Alphonse Marius Dupont, industriel colonial et de Cécile Léonie Audra. Il est décédé à Paris le 30 octobre 1967. Peintre et photographe, Savitry vendit ses premières toiles en 1929 à la Galerie Zborovski, aidé par son ami Aragon.

 

Photographe de plateau, ami de Jacques Prévert et Marcel Carné, Savitry fut aussi photographe de mode. Savitry avait des attaches à Toulon, ville qu'il fréquenta; Son frère était assureur boulevard de Strasbourg, grand ami de Louis Vola et d'un certain M. Trollard, propriétaire du Coq hardi.

 

Il amena Django Reinhardt et son frère Joseph à Paris et les introduisit dans le milieu du Jazz en France.
Savitry participa à la création de l'agence Rapho.

All images  ©  Émile Savitry

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