Black was not a color for Pierre Soulages, but light with which he painted. The French artist stood in front of the canvas until the very end. The painter, who was considered the wizard of the color black, died at the age of 102. The city council of his birthplace in southern France, Rodez, announced this on Wednesday. Soulages left behind an extensive body of work that is said to consist of more than 1,500 paintings and several hundred graphic works.
His minimalist paintings in black brought Soulages international fame early on. In 1948 his compositions were shown at the first exhibition of French painters in Germany. In 1955 he took part in the first documenta in Kassel and his first retrospectives in international museums took place in the 1960s.
While he initially used black to express the light effect of white and other colors, from 1979 he started to completely cover the canvas with black and use the color to reflect the light. Oversized triptychs and polyptychs were created in which the structure of the thickly applied black color paste modulates the light.
Beyond black
He called these compositions “Outrenoir”, Beyond Black, which have defined his work ever since. Soulages once said it wasn’t just black paint, it was light he painted with. In this way he made light an integral part of his work.
Soulages was born on December 24, 1919 in Rodez in the south of France, the son of a coachbuilder. During his lifetime, he left more than 500 works to his hometown, some of which can be seen today at the Soulages Museum, which opened in 2014.
Source: Krone
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