Pure black, he managed to bring out the light. An uncompromising creator, the painter Pierre Soulages, who died on Wednesday at the age of 102, never stopped exploring the mysteries…
Pure black, he managed to bring out the light. An uncompromising creator, the painter Pierre Soulages, who died on Wednesday at the age of 102, never stopped exploring the mysteries of this pigment and painting.
“I like the authority of black, its gravity, its clarity, its radicality (…) Black has undoubted possibilities”, explained in December 2019 the artist, one of the few who has had the honors of the Louvre during his lifetime. . “It is a very active color. You put black next to a dark color and it lights up,” he said in an interview with AFP.
Tall, always dressed in black, Soulages never lost touch with his native Aveyron while painting elsewhere. He was a man of loyalty, to himself, to the landscapes of his childhood, to the great plateaus, to his artistic search for light.
For more than 75 years, he has tirelessly traced his path, attracting recognition from cultural institutions and the art market, which has made him one of the most highly regarded active French artists.
One of his paintings from 1961, corresponding to his red period, sold for $20.2 million in New York in November 2021, far surpassing the previous record.
Museum in Rodez
In May 2014 – he was 94 at the time – he had the rare privilege of attending the inauguration in Rodez, his hometown, of a museum entirely dedicated to his work.
Soulages was born on December 24, 1919 in a modest home from the beginning of the 19th century. His father, a carriage builder, died when he was only five years old. He was raised by his mother, who ran a fishing and hunting tackle shop.
Very early on, the Soulages disdained “beautiful watercolor colors” and painted winter trees, bare branches, snow effects with ink.
During a school visit to the nearby Sainte-Foy de Conques abbey, the teenager had a revelation before the beauty of this Romanesque church: he was to be a painter.
Pierre Soulages was admitted to the Beaux-Arts in Paris on the eve of World War II. But he skipped classes, preferring to train in Montpellier.
In 1941, he met Colette Llaurens there, whom he married a year later, providing them with false papers to escape the Compulsory Labor Service (STO), which forced young French men to work for Germany.
Pierre and Colette are inseparable.
In 1947, the young painter moved to Paris, where he was noticed by Francis Picabia who encouraged him, as well as Fernand Léger. Abstract painting was then popular. But it is red, yellow, blue. Spirits, he chooses to work with the simple walnut shell, used to color wood and painter’s brushes.
In the 1950s, his paintings entered the most prestigious museums in the world such as the Guggenheim in New York or the Tate Gallery in London. He meets leading representatives of the New York School, including Mark Rothko who becomes his friend.
A hundred stained glass windows
Large canvases from the 1950s to the 1970s bear witness to the painter’s work in chiaroscuro. Black asserts itself in a relationship with other colors such as red or blue, especially thanks to the scratching technique.
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In 1959, Soulages had a house-workshop built on the heights of Sète, facing the Mediterranean, where he had always lived in recent years. He also had two workshops in Paris.
The artist, who prefers to work at home, switches to “outrenoir” in 1979: while he is struggling with a work completely covered in thick black, Soulages realizes that he has just taken a step by painting it with stripes.
“I was beyond the darkness, in another mental realm,” he said. “The ink I paint with is black. But it is the light, scattered by the reflections, that matters”.
In 1986, the state placed an order for more than 100 stained glass windows for the abbey church of Conques. They were inaugurated in 1994.
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Soulages Museum in Rodez, Aveyron, July 11, 2018
• ERIC CABANIS
Painter Pierre Soulages, September 13, 2005, in his studio in Sète
• Georges Gobet
