After the Liberation, in which Olivier Debré played a direct part as a member of the Resistance, the artist began to produce non-figurative works in a bid to express his emotion in the face of human barbarity. He strove not to represent the individual, but his own perception of him, with the soul as important as the body. There are no longer murderers, victims, old people, young people, men or women... Debré's work focuses on the human being, symbolized by a vertical sign in compositions where materials take precedence over shapes and colors. 
From the early 1950s onwards, Debré developed his famous “Signe-personnage” series, which lasted for a whole decade.

Personnage Jaune, created in 1957-1958, is a masterwork in the “Signe-Personnage” series. It perfectly illustrates the words of writer and poet Bernard Noël: “the strength of this sign is that it possesses the sharpness of a letter and the massive thickness of a presence. One senses a rivalry between calligraphy, which spiritualizes space, and brutal inscription, which imbues it with sensuality.” Impressive in its monumentality, the figure stretches across the entire height of the canvas, a little like a totem pole linking heaven and earth. Devoid of any anthropomorphism, only the verticality of the format suggests a standing figure. The limited palette plays on modulations of yellow, green, blue and white. The energy that emanates from it lies in the painter's technique: a thick material that reveals the gesture and structures the figure. The painter does not seek to conceal his gesture, but rather to accentuate it, bringing the figure to life through broad pictorial layers that reveal vibrations in the material and color. 

“Signs have meaning only insofar as they contain life itself".
Olivier Debré (radio interview with Bernard Noël, 1993)