Pierre Soulages  

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Pierre Soulages (1919 – 2022) was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor known for paintings featuring big black brush strokes. He first came to attention during the lyrical abstraction and tachisme period after World War II.

In the 1970s he was often compared to Franz Kline (Art Now, 1976).

One of his best-known paintings is Painting, November 20, 1956 (1956), in the collection of the Guggenheim.

Biography

Soulages was born in Rodez, Aveyron, in 1919. He was interested in Celtic carvings in the local museum as a child, and also in the Romanesque architecture of the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques. Inspired by the art of Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso, he began studied at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris, but soon dropped out because he was disappointed by the traditional style.

Before World War II, Soulages toured museums in Paris seeking his vocation; after wartime military service, he opened a studio in Courbevoie, Paris, holding his first exhibition at the Salon des Indépendants in 1947. He also worked as a designer of stage sets. He exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1954, and in New York City the same year, gaining recognition in the United States. His works were included in the two major exhibitions of European artists, Younger European Painters at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum (1953) and The New Decade: 22 European Painters and Sculptors at the Museum of Modern Art (1955) in New York. In 1979, Soulages was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

From 1987 to 1994, he produced 104 stained-glass windows for the Abbey of Sainte-Foy in Conques. Soulages was the first living artist to have been invited to exhibit at the state Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg and later with the Tretyakov Gallery of Moscow (2001).

A composition he created in 1959 sold for 1,200,000 euros at Sotheby's in 2006.

In 2007, the Musée Fabre of Montpellier devoted an entire room to Soulages, presenting a donation he made to the city. It included twenty paintings dating from 1951 to 2006, among which were major works from the 1960s, two large "plus-black" works from the 1970s, and several large polyptychs. A retrospective was held at the Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou from October 2009 to March 2010. In 2010, the Museum of Mexico City presented a retrospective of paintings that also included an interview-video with the artist (Spanish subtitles).

In 2014, the Musée Soulages opened in Soulages' hometown of Rodez, as a place to permanently display his works and to house temporary contemporary exhibitions. Soulages and his wife donated 900 works. The paintings represent all stages of his work, from post-war oils to a phase of work he calls Outrenoir. It was the most complete display of work from his first 30 years.

In 2014, Soulages presented fourteen recent works in his first American exhibition in 10 years, at Dominique Lévy and Galerie Perrotin, New York.

In September 2019, the Levy Gorvy Gallery in New York held a major exhibition ahead of the retrospective at the Louvre Museum in December celebrating his 100th birthday.

On 17 November 2021, his ‘Peinture 195 x 130 cm, 4 août 1961’, was auctioned for $20.2M – a new world auction record for the artist.

Artistic practice

Soulages named his own practice Outrenoir, (Beyond Black) the paintings he produces are known for their endless black depth, created by playing with the light reflected off of the texture of the paint. Knowing that he needed a new term to define the way that he worked, Soulages invented 'Outrenoir' to define his practice. Not having a translation into English, the closest meaning is 'beyond black'; in a 2014 interview he explained the definition of the term, "Outrenoir doesn't exist in English; the closest is "beyond black." In French, you say "outre-Manche," "beyond the Channel," to mean England or "outre-Rhin," "beyond the Rhine," to mean Germany. In other words, "beyond black" is a different country from black."

The infatuation Soulages had with black began long before his investigations with 'Outrenoir' at the age of 60. Initially inspired by his interest in the prehistoric and his want of retreating to something more pure, primal and deliberately stripped of any other connotations.

Applying the paint in thick layers, Soulages' painting technique includes using objects such as spoons, tiny rakes and bits of rubber to work away at the painting, often making scraping, digging or etching movements depending on whether he wants to evoke a smooth or rough surface. The texture that is then produced either absorbs or rejects light, breaking up the surface of the painting by disrupting the uniformity of the black. He often used bold cuts in vertical and horizontal lines, the crevasses and forms created by using angles and contours. In his recent work from 2013–14, Soulages began to explicitly vary the pigment used in the paint, mixing matte and glossy types of black as well as hardened densities of black pigment. Preferring to suspend the paintings like walls, he uses wires to hang them in the middle of the room.

Instead of having titles, Soulages paintings are named by their size and date of production. 17 December 1966 from 1966, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art demonstrates the artist's boldly brushed black on white canvases.

Linking in as of 2022

20th-century French art, 20th-century Western painting, Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy, Abstract expressionism, André Villers, Applicat-Prazan, Austrian Decoration for Science and Art, Aveyron, Beatriz Zamora, Bernard Childs, Bokujinkai, Brendan O'Connell (artist), Brian Balfour-Oatts, Brittany, Carnegie Prize, Centre Pompidou, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Charles Juliet, Christo Coetzee, Documenta 1, Documenta III, Dominique Lévy, Dynamic Museum, Emmanuel Perrotin, Éric Alibert, Franck Prazan, François Willi Wendt, Frédéric Jacques Temple, Galerie Karsten Greve, Galerie Perrotin, George Labouchère, Gérard Ernest Schneider, Gérard Rondeau, Gimpel Fils, Globe de Cristal Awards, Gui Rochat, Guillaume Bottazzi, Guy de Montlaur, Henry Salkauskas, History of painting, II. documenta, Informalism, Jacob Wexler, Jacques Borker, James Johnson Sweeney, Jan Vanriet, Jean Fourton, Jean Leppien, Jean-Max Albert, Jean-Michel Coulon, Jean-Michel Jarre, Jiro Yoshihara, Joseph Delteil, Karel Appel, Kestnergesellschaft, Kim Kulim, Lalan (artist), Languedoc-Roussillon, Le Temps des cerises (publisher), Lee Ungno Museum, Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art, List of contemporary artists, List of French artists, List of French painters, List of painters in the Art Institute of Chicago, List of painters in the National Gallery of Art, List of sculptors, Lyrical abstraction, Marie de Villepin, Marie Raymond, Michèle Van de Roer, Mixografia, Modern art, Mogens Andersen, Morita Shiryū, Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Musée d'art moderne (Saint-Étienne), Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, Musée Fabre, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Museum of Contemporary Art (Skopje), Museum of Grenoble, National Gallery of Indonesia, Octavio Pizarro, Outline of painting, Pierrette Bloch, Praemium Imperiale, Ray Parker (painter), Richard-Max Tremblay, Rodez, Roland Desné, Samuel M. Kootz, School of Paris, Skopje, Sohan Qadri, Sophie Mallebranche, Stefan Ramniceanu, Tachisme, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Timeline of art, University of St. Gallen, Western painting, William Gear

See also

• Abstract expressionism
• Lyrical abstraction
• Tachisme