Pierre
Soulages
Pierre
Soulages
Soulages
Pierre Soulages belongs to a generation of painters who started focusing solely on non-figurative art in the post-war years. Using majestic, calligraphic strokes, he at first aimed to strike a balance between black and white before working entirely on what he called "outrenoir" (“beyond black”) with the goal of revealing, paradoxically, all its light.
In his earliest works, the French painter at first used brou de noix (a stain made from walnut husks), a brown liquid that allowed him to play with transparencies and opacity. Since 1979, black, which he relentlessly scratches, grooves and sculpts, has spread across the whole surface of his canvases. "I do not tell stories. I do not depict things. I paint and I present," says Soulages, a contemporary of American abstract expressionists and other major artists, including De Kooning, Rothko and Hartung.
His paintings in the Pinault Collection were featured in the 2009 "Qui a peur des artistes ?" (“Who’s Afraid of Artists?”) show at the Palais des Arts in Dinard. In 2019, the Louvre hosted a retrospective of his work.
In his earliest works, the French painter at first used brou de noix (a stain made from walnut husks), a brown liquid that allowed him to play with transparencies and opacity. Since 1979, black, which he relentlessly scratches, grooves and sculpts, has spread across the whole surface of his canvases. "I do not tell stories. I do not depict things. I paint and I present," says Soulages, a contemporary of American abstract expressionists and other major artists, including De Kooning, Rothko and Hartung.
His paintings in the Pinault Collection were featured in the 2009 "Qui a peur des artistes ?" (“Who’s Afraid of Artists?”) show at the Palais des Arts in Dinard. In 2019, the Louvre hosted a retrospective of his work.
