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Pierre Soulages
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Joel Saget / dpa
Sometimes they are matt, sometimes glossy – and the wide stripes on the non-representational works are almost always black.
The French painter Pierre Soulages has been exploring the color black for more than 60 years.
Now the artist, who is one of the most influential abstract painters of the 20th century, has died at the age of 102.
Soulages was born in Rodez on Christmas Eve 1919, the son of a carriage builder.
After World War II he went to Paris.
There, alongside Hans Hartung and Francis Picabia, he met representatives of the American art scene, including Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell.
Soulages became known early on for his minimalist, gestural paintings in black.
In 1948 his compositions were shown in the first exhibition of French painters in Germany.
Solo exhibitions in galleries in Paris, Munich and New York followed.
The Louvre already exhibited his works during Soulages' lifetime - an honor that only a few artists are given.
In 1955 he took part in the first documenta in Kassel, and his first retrospectives in international museums took place in the 1960s.
Record amount for »Red Phase«
One of his 1961 paintings - from Soulages' so-called "red phase" - was sold in New York in November 2021 after a heated bidding for a record $20.2 million.
The first abstract compositions were created in the mid-1940s.
These are depictions in which he created sweeping, wide black-brownish lines with nut stain, a material used to spice up old furniture.
In these works, Soulages still used the color black to express the light effect of white and other colors.
That was to change in 1979.
He began to completely cover the canvas with black, using the color to reflect the light.
Oversized triptychs and polyptychs were created in which the structure of the black color paste modulates the light.
Beyond Black
Outrenoir, beyond black, he called these compositions, which have since defined his work and made him internationally known.
It's not just black paint, it's light that he paints with, Soulages once told the German Press Agency.
These works were created rather out of an artistic crisis.
After standing in front of a canvas for hours and experimenting helplessly with the color black, he left his studio in despair, Soulages said in several interviews.
When he later returned to his studio, the black had already spread across the entire canvas.
Soulages worked with brushes, brooms and wooden sticks to create grooves and furrows in the black acrylic paint thickly applied to the canvas, which, depending on the incidence of light, allow new structures to appear.
In this way he made light an integral part of his work.
He leaves posterity a comprehensive oeuvre, which is said to consist of over 1500 paintings and several hundred graphic works.
Years ago, Soulages left around 500 works to his native town of Rodez.
The value of the donation has been estimated at up to 80 million euros and today part of it can be seen in the Soulages Museum, which opened in 2014 and which the city dedicated to the master of the color black.
sak/dpa