Ref: article by Isabelle Soing, Marie-Claire Décoration, May-June 2022
We owe him the success of the trendy restaurants and pubs of the 60s and 70s.
Passing away in 2014, Slavik—a bon vivant decorator in a saharienne jacket and snake ring—was also the daring designer of the drugstores. An essential coffee-table book rescues this peerless creator and “creator of ambiance” from oblivion.
“Call me Slavik”
More occupied with “walking, observing, mulling things over” in Paris than slogging away at high school, 21-year-old Wiatscheslav Vassiliev revealed an eclectic drawing style as soon as he was admitted to the Arts Déco in 1941. The son of a Tsarist officer swallowed up by the Bolshevik revolution, he found his path and his artist name.
A follower of Cocteau’s jack-of-all-trades approach, he designed ballet sets for Serge Lifar—a Russian exile like himself—and the Comédie-Française.
Assistant to the poster artist Cassandre, inspired as much by the Commedia dell’arte as by Dali and Magritte, Slavik painted dreamlike scenes on furniture, screens, and even tapestry cartoons commissioned by the Manufacture des Gobelins and Aubusson.
