Pierre Soulages

Pierre Soulages (1919 - 2022) is a major figure on the French and international contemporary scene. A painter and printmaker, he uses the color black as the subject of his canvases. Devoting himself entirely to painting from 1946 onwards, Pierre Soulages distinguished himself from the semi-figurative and colorful painting of the post-war period with his dark, abstract canvases. While the early part of his career expressed gesture and duration through a few lines on his canvases, he progressed towards a more global approach, making black a predominant element that invades all his compositions. From 1979 onwards, light played a predominant role in his work, leading him to describe his use of black as "outrenoir" or "black-light". First exhibited in 1947 at the Parc des Expositions in Paris as part of the "Les surindépendants" exhibition, his work has been shown continuously in France and around the world. In 2014, a museum was dedicated to him in his hometown of Rodez. But it was in 2019 that his undisputed place in the art world raised him to the same level as Picasso and Chagall, becoming the third artist to exhibit at the Louvre Museum in his lifetime.