Great costume designer, recipient of four Césars and a Molière, Christian Gasc died at the age of 76. He left behind a rich career of 60 films, 20 operas and 40 plays.
He is a great artist who has just passed away. The costume designer Christian Gasc, recipient of four Césars and a Molière, with a rich career of some 60 films, 20 operas and 40 plays, has died at the age of 76. Originally, however, nothing predestined him to embrace this career.
Born August 6, 1945 in Dunes, in Tarn-et-Garonne, he grew up in a modest home, between a father who was a mechanic and a mother who was a seamstress. It was she who gave him, from the age of eight, a taste for cinema, in the city of Valence, where he spent part of his youth. Childhood friend of André Téchiné, they went to Paris together to try to make a career in the 7th Art.
Although he was an industrial designer by training, Christian Gasc began his profession in 1974 by the chance of an encounter which would prove to be decisive. At the Chaillot film library, he met Liliane de Kermadec, who offered him to work on the costumes for his film Aloïse, which included Isabelle Huppert in its distribution.
Working with big names in cinema such as François Truffaut (La Chambre verte), Jean-Luc Godard (Passion), Bertrand Blier (Mon Homme, Les Côtelettes), Claire Denis (Chocolat), Bertrand Tavernier (Daddy Nostalgie), André Téchiné ( six times), Marie-France Pisier or Patrice Leconte, Christian Gasc will be Caesarized four times.
The first, in 1996, for Madame Butterfly by Frédéric Mitterrand. The second the following year, with the dazzling Ridicule by Patrice Leconte. The 3rd in 1998, by creating the costumes for the Hunchback by Philippe de Broca. And finally in 2013, with the costumes of Farewell to the Queen by Benoît Jacquot.
In 2003, he received a Molière for the costumes of Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde at the Royal Palace Theater. If many directors have called on his creativity in the theater (Pierre Romans, Jean-Baptiste Sastre, Catherine Hiegel, Aurélien Recoing …), he has repeatedly exercised his talents on the stages of operas in Geneva, Milan , Paris and London in particular.
he signed, among other things, the costumes of The Marquise d’Ô and Tosca in Monte-Carlo, Marius and Fanny at the Marseille Opera, Peter Pan at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Manon Lescaut at the Teatro Regio in Turin, at the Bunka Kaikan in Tokyo and at the Scala in Milan, Falstaff and The Tetralogy by Wagner at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Clemency of Titus in Milan … In 2014, moreover, he had participated in the production of La Traviata by Verdi at the Paris Opera, directed by Benoit Jacquot, after his triumph of Werther on this same stage.