Sunflower Girl, Circa 1999

Dean Tavoularis  

In the tradition of great production designers (Alexandre Trauner, Ken Adam), Dean Tavoularis has discreetly established himself in the history of cinema, leaving his mark on around thirty films, including almost the entire work of Francis F. Coppola.
Trained at Disney (Lady and the Tramp, Mary Poppins), this son of Greek immigrants, settled in California, took drawing and architecture classes, before materializing the plans of Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde, Little Big Man) and Michelangelo Antonioni (Zabriskie Point). Each of his shoots requires long hours of location scouting and documentary research, his secret for defining the opaque atmosphere of The Godfather or the humidity of Apocalypse Now, the misty exteriors of Hammett by Wim Wenders or the coquettish interiors of Carnage, his last film, directed by Roman Polanski in 2011. Since then, in Paris where he lives with the actress Aurore Clément, Dean Tavoularis paints canvases which he exhibits alongside the storyboards of his brother Alex, the very ones which were used studying the settings of his films.