Ref: Le Monde, December 2021
The drugstores of the Champs-Élysées and Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the Dôme in Montparnasse, the Jules Verne at the Eiffel Tower?
It was he: the painter and decorator Slavik (1920–2014), born in Tallinn, Estonia, who reigned over Paris for nearly half a century, from the 1950s to the dawn of the year 2000.
People loved his surreal shop windows for Galeries Lafayette, then his atmospheres that were half Slavic, half America—“Route 66” style—for the some 300 restaurants to his name.
And also his avant-garde ideas, such as the Drugstore Publicis selling cigarettes, newspapers, medicines and records… until late at night.
Having fled the Russian Revolution at the age of 9, alone with his mother, this graduate of Paris’s École nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs and the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques dreamed that, in the capital, people would have fun at all hours. He loved fine materials and fanciful motifs, which he painted on Jacques Adnet’s furniture, when he was not collaborating with the graphic designer Cassandre or the choreographer Serge Lifar.
“He fulfilled all these applied arts roles“, recalls his friend, fashion photographer and graphic designer Peter Knapp.
