The Fabre Museum in Montpellier, which houses an important collection of works by Pierre Soulages, will be free this weekend in tribute to the world-famous painter who died overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday at the age of 102.
"We wanted to organize a weekend in tribute to Pierre Soulages at the heart of the Fabre Museum, which helped shape his outlook and whom he never stopped visiting throughout his life"
, explained in a press release. the mayor of the city in the south of France, Michaël Delafosse.
"Montpellier will never forget the invaluable gift that Pierre and Colette Soulages made to it through this donation (in 2005), which is at the very origin of the renovation of the Fabre museum with its wing devoted to contemporary art"
, added the elected socialist.
A register of condolences will be available in the museum which, thanks to successive donations from the Soulages couple, has a collection of 34 canvases produced between 1951 and 2012 by this world star of painting, known for his abstract paintings in infinite shades of black.
Born in Rodez on December 24, 1919, Pierre Soulages had been admitted to the Beaux-Arts in Paris on the eve of the Second World War, but he had preferred to train in Montpellier.
In 1941 he met Colette Llaurens there, whom he married a year later.
Established in Sète, not far from Montpellier, for more than 50 years, Pierre Soulages died Tuesday, October 25 at the Nîmes hospital of heart failure.