Pierre Soulages
Pierre Jean Louis Germain Soulages (French: [sulaʒ]; 24 December 1919 – 25 October 2022) was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor. In 2014, President François Hollande of France described him as "the world's greatest living artist."[1] His works are held by leading museums of the world, and there is a museum dedicated to his art in his hometown of Rodez.
Pierre Soulages
Soulages is known as "the painter of black", owing to his interest in the colour "both as a colour and a non-colour. When light is reflected on black, it transforms and transmutes it. It opens a mental field all its own." He saw light as a work material; striations of the black surface of his paintings enable him to reflect light, allowing the black to come out of darkness and into brightness, thus becoming a luminous colour.[2][3]
Soulages produced 104 stained-glass windows for the Romanesque architecture of the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques from 1987 to 1994. He received international awards, and the Louvre in Paris held a retrospective of his works on the occasion of his centenary.
Early life and family[edit]
Soulages was born in Rodez, Aveyron, on 24 December 1919.[4][5] His father, Amans, was a carriage maker who ran a hunting and fishing shop. He died when Pierre was age five.[4] Pierre was raised by his older sister Antoinette and their mother, Aglaé Zoé Julie (Corp) Soulages.[6] As a child, he was interested in the area's menhirs,[4] in Celtic carvings in the local museum, and also in the Romanesque architecture of the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques. He dressed in all black, and his mother disliked it.[7]
Early career[edit]
Inspired by the art of Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso, Soulages began studies at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris, but soon dropped out because he was disappointed by the traditional style.[8]
After wartime military service, he studied further at the Fine Arts School of Montpellier.[7] He opened a studio in Courbevoie, Paris, painting in "complete abstraction", with black as the dominant colour, and experimenting with walnut oil.[7] His first exhibition was at the Salon des Indépendants in 1947.[3][8][9] He also worked as a designer of stage sets. He exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1954,[3] and in New York City the same year,[10] gaining recognition in the United States. Betty Parsons Gallery showed his work in New York in 1949.[6] In 1950, Leo Castelli organized an exhibition at Sidney Janis.[6] In 1954 Soulages began showing at Samuel Kootz.[6] 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.[10] In 1979, Soulages was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[11]
Personal life[edit]
While at the Fine Arts School of Montpellier,[7] Soulages met Colette Llaurens[4] (born 1920).[25] They were married on 24 October[25] 1942.[3] The couple had no children. In 2017, they permanently moved to their summer retreat in Sète.[26]
Soulages died in Nîmes[7] on 25 October 2022, less than two months before his 103rd birthday, and was survived by his wife. He had marked their 80th wedding anniversary the day before his death.[27][3][4][5]
Collections of works by Soulages are held by many museums, including:[11]
Awards that Soulages received included:[11]