French abstract artist Pierre Soulages, best known for painting mostly in black, died Tuesday at the age of 102.
A museum dedicated to his life and work in his southwestern hometown of Rodes announced Wednesday.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to the artist and said, “Pierre Soulages was able to reinvent black by revealing the light. It’s a vivid metaphor that inspires hope in each of us.”
Soulages paintings are in over 110 museums around the world, and he was able to charge seven-figure sums for these works.
His 1960 thick black striped canvas sold for $10.5 million at a Louvre auction in 2019.
paint it black
Born in Rodez, southern France, in 1929, he belonged to a generation of artists who reinvented abstract painting in post-World War II Europe. When French hero and president Charles de Gaulle called French painting “sick”, Soulages countered that it was not sick but “attacked” and that his role was to protect it. did.
Since his first solo exhibition in 1947, aged 27, Soulages has used black.
“I love black’s authority, its rigor, its obviousness, its radicalism,” the tall painter, who has always worn black, declared to French news agency AFP in 2019. also told the French-German TV channel ARTE, “I don’t paint with black, I paint with light.”
Many of his works are untitled, but are named for the techniques used, dimensions, and dates of execution.
His art involves scraping, digging, and etching thick layers of paint with rubber, spoons, or small rakes to create different textures that absorb or reject light, making him a “different country” than plain black. led to what we called
His legacy includes the creation of some 104 stained glass windows for the Romanesque Abbey of Sainte-Foy-de-Conques between 1987 and 1994.
In 1955 he participated in the first documenta art fair in the central German city of Kassel. Since then, the event has become one of the world’s most prestigious contemporary art events.
Exhibition at the Louvre
A solo exhibition was held at the Louvre Museum in Paris to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth in December 2019.
After Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso, he is the third artist to have a solo exhibition at the museum during his lifetime.
At the time, Soulages told the French newspaper La Depeche du Midi: In other words, he doesn’t mind dying as long as his painting lives on.
He leaves his wife, Colette, who is 101 years old.
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