I wrote the article about the great painter Pierre Soulages, who brought blackness and light together, about three years before his death, on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Soulages died yesterday, that is, on the night between October 25 and 26, 2022, at the age of 102, two months before he turned 103. For 75 years, Pierre Soulages carved his path, took his partner by his side, renewed the relationship between light and blackness, and gained international recognition.
Pierre Soulages always looked to the future, wanting more and more time. “When I work, I have the impression that I am alive. And I am happy to see that there are people who love what I do, that my works give meaning to their lives.” Reasons to live. The works remain.
This is where the article begins:
For Pierre Soulages, a birthday like any other day of the year is dedicated to painting. The main thing for him is to see his paintings come to life. But exhibitions are an opportunity to show the life of the works to as many people as possible, and therefore we should welcome the salutes of the Louvre and the Pompidou Center to the special painter, considered one of the greatest French artists of the period. And not only that. Pierre Soulages is a well-known artist and is recognized throughout the world.
On December 24, 2019, French painter Pierre Soulages celebrated his 100th birthday. The Louvre Museum He paid tribute to the great artist with a retrospective of his works, some twenty works, from 1946 to the present day, including three huge paintings that he completed in his studio in the city of Sète, in the last few weeks. Only Chagall and Picasso before him, on their 90th birthdays, were given such a tribute, in the bosom of the Louvre (details on the exhibition can be found HERE).
Soulage's 90th birthday was celebrated in 2009 atCenter Pompidou In an exhibition that spanned more than 2000 square meters and hosted over 100 works. The important event attracted more than half a million visitors. At his home in the city of Sète in the south France, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, Soulages continued to fulfill his calling as a painter, with his health at its best, his senses alert, the wife of his youth, Colette, two years younger than him, by his side.
Life is too short, for him, even today at his age. He still has much to see, to try, to dare, to discover, while painting. Pierre Soulages paints every day, with his back to the sea, the sun, the stars and the sky, with the same desire and the same diligence. He speaks simply and kindly about his life and his artistic path. The enormous success has not damaged his modesty and nobility.
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Enlightenment at the age of four
At the age of four or five, little Pierre received paints and a brush as a gift. He picked up the brush but, contrary to expectations, did not dip it in paint but in a black inkwell. Even then, he intuitively preferred the inkwell to the paints. The next step was to mark long lines on a white sheet of paper. “What did you draw, Pierre?” “Snow,” the boy replied. Everyone laughed, but no one forgot the episode that would prove to be particularly significant later.
Already at the age of four, little Pierre felt, indeed, that Snow White would be enhanced by the contrast that the color black would create with it. As Soulages himself explains, the black was not there because of its quality as black but because of its power as black. The black lines made the white page appear whiter than white. And later, a few days before his 100th birthday, Soulages would explain that black is a highly active color, making any dark color placed next to it appear less dark.
Artistic enlightenment at the age of four. Did the child then also see his future? Did he know that the paintings of the light reflections that he would see from the black marker would be exhibited in Paris, London, Zurich, Lausanne, The Hague, Lisbon, New York, Washington, Montreal, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tokyo, Shanghai? (Of the approximately 1700 paintings he has painted so far, over 230 are in 110 museums around the world.) Did he know that a huge, impressive museum would be established for him in his hometown of Rodez, where he would be considered an icon, a living legend of contemporary abstract painting? That painters, art critics, musicians, poets, writers, intellectuals, physicists, astronomers and heads of state would make a pilgrimage to his home? That his paintings would sell for ten million dollars? (Two of his paintings were recently sold at auction, one for just under ten million dollars, the other for just over…) Probably not. Pierre Soulages is stable, balanced, open, attentive, interested in others, dedicated to his work every day and not at all preoccupied with ego twists and self-aggrandizement.
happy childhood
Pierre Soulages was born on December 24, 1919, in the southern city of Rodez. On one side of the street, Rue Combarel, are austere administrative buildings, a courthouse, a gendarmerie, a prison, a hospital, an asylum for the mentally ill. On the other, a completely different world of modest boutiques, one after another, workshops of professionals, a weaver, an upholsterer, a tailor, a tinsmith, a blacksmith, a carpenter. The boy listened to the noises that emanated from them, watched the craftsmen at work, the way they used their tools. Most of all, he was fascinated by the carpenter, who, with only three tools, in his small workshop, performed marvelous works. That carpenter would paint his furniture with pigment he extracted from walnut shells, a technique that the young painter Soulages would later adopt.
Pierre already knew then that he would be an artist. Painting was a natural, innate need. The influence of artists was decisive. To the classical brushes, Soulages would add tools that he himself would invent and assemble, tools similar to those of the artists of his childhood, from Rue de Combrelle in Brodez. At that time, Pierre felt the fundamental difference between the artists he respected, loved and admired and the artist he would become. The artist, the carpenter, knows in advance what he will do and what paths he will take. He, Pierre, the artist, the painter, knows what tools he will use, but where he will end up – a riddle. He of course has an idea of the possibilities before him, but which one he will choose and what exactly will be in the end, all of this remains vague, mysterious.
Curiosity was and still is the engine that drives the artist to this day, at his advanced age. Never without a pre-determined plan, as he says – what he does teaches him what he is looking for. Where will the painting take him this time? Where will the lock and key lead him? Soulages never stops removing the veil, revealing himself unexpectedly. And he awaits it, unperceived, that which comes to him by surprise, in a moment of experience that is beyond the conscious, beyond the controlled. Pierre Soulages' works elude all representation and all interpretation (a name is nothing more than an indication of format and date), only repeating and telling each time anew about the process of their birth and beginning. The painting speaks of the painting, and after his relationship with the painter that was built during the execution, he turns to the viewer and asks him to look at it from different angles and at different times of the day. Pierre Soulages invented his own abstract art.
Five-year-old Pierre, who had just lost his father, grew up under the loving eye of his mother and older sister, happy in the landscape of his beloved Aveyron region, the arid plateaus, the bare trees, the dry stones, the rusty iron. Hence his fondness for materials considered raw and not noble, inferior. When he went out to paint in nature, he would look at the trees from a great distance, inventing more than copying. Bare branches would be the source of the black lines that he would later draw.
Enlightenment at the age of thirteen
A school visit to the village of Conques (Hebrew: “conch”), near Rodez, exposed Pierre to a masterpiece of 11th-century Romanesque art: the abbey church of Saint-Foy-de-Cunque (L'abbatiale Sainte-Foy de Conques), one of the more important intermediate stops on the pilgrimage route to the tomb of the Christian apostle Saint James, Saint Jacques, in French (hence the "Saint Jacques oyster", named after him), in the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela.
Pierre Soulages says that on the day he saw the abbey church, he was deeply impressed by the simplicity, the sculpture, the artistry, the way in which space began to exist thanks to light. At that defining moment, he knew that his whole life would be dedicated to painting, that it was worth spending a lifetime achieving this goal. It should be noted, however, that Pierre Soulages categorically rejects any attempt to give his paintings a religious interpretation.
Contrary to the formative impression he had at the abbey church in Conques, the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris provided him with an unpleasant experience. When he arrived there for the entrance exams, he happened to come across a painting competition by the school's students and their paintings disgusted him. After learning that he had been accepted, he decided to leave the capital and immediately returned to Rodez.
Another unpleasant experience awaited him later in Montpellier, this time on a political basis. On February 13, 1941, Pierre Soulages went to the School of Fine Arts in Montpellier with the aim of obtaining a certificate as a teacher of painting. When he arrived in the city, he heard cheers and shouts. It was an enthusiastic crowd that cheered Pétain and Franco who appeared before him on the balcony of the Prefecture. Franco, on a visit to France, shakes Pétain's hand - Pierre Soulages' world collapsed on him. The next day he went toFaber Museum And he recovered. Art was there and still is as a consolation and compensation for the horrors of history.
Love was also not long in coming. On the benches of the School of Fine Arts in Montpellier, he met Colette, a thin, fragile and beautiful young woman, who sat down next to him because she immediately saw that the tall guy, six feet tall, did not paint like everyone else. A few days later, Pierre met her again, this time in the company of three hooligan boys who mocked Picasso's art. Colette tried to defend the attacked man, but Pierre rescued her from the futile argument, which could have turned violent, and suggested that she join him for another visit to the Fabre Museum. They both had the same taste... From that day on, they had not been apart. Before Pierre Soulages' death, in 2022, they had managed to celebrate eighty years of marriage. Pierre declared that he had never been bored in her company.
A year after they met, they were married in the church of Saint-Louis in the city of Sète, dressed in black and at midnight. After the “free zone” was conquered, Soulage hid in vineyard estates where he worked under a false identity to escape being drafted for forced labor in Germany. Pierre Soulage knows all the work of agriculture in depth.
In 1946, Pierre and Colette Soulages immigrated to Paris and settled in a small apartment in Courbevoie. Times were hard and the couple had no means. Pierre's mother sent bread distribution cards, Colette's father gave him barrels of wine that the couple exchanged for meat. Poverty led Pierre Soulages to approach painting in original ways. Following the artist's example from his childhood in Rodez, he began using walnut shells, a cheap material, as paint for his paintings. Soulages explains that the walnut shells answered an inner need and helped him reach what he was.
One day, in a kind of impatient impulse, he attacked the paper with paintbrushes and pigment he had prepared himself from walnut shells. That was the beginning of his success. The thick lines, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, drawn in broad strokes and in one stroke – revolutionary in the world of abstract painting at the time!
Were the lines, a kind of ideograms, memories of the bare branches of trees in the winter of his childhood? Yes, Soulages explains that these attempts stem from his first paintings as a child and teenager in which the black branches expressed movement in space. And he painted not only in black at that time, but also in ochre, shades of brown, red, influences of cave paintings he visited.
1948 – The beginning of success
Pierre Soulage's paintings attracted the attention of Ottomar Domnick (1907-1989), a German neurologist and psychiatrist, art lover and collector, who set himself the goal of rebuilding Germany's identity and reconciling it with the countries of Europe through abstract art. Ottomar Domnick, a philanthropist, psychiatrist, philanthropist, art collector and critic, musician and documentary filmmaker, an important figure in German culture after World War II, decided to make Germany, after twelve years of Nazi censorship, a center for abstract art (Link to the Ottomar and Greta Domenik Museum in Nürtingen, a cultural center with a sculpture garden).
Ottomar Domenik was grateful to France for having presented German painters at the Third Salon of Abstract Art (1948), who, after the dark, stifling and oppressive Nazi period, were thirsty for fruitful contact with French artists and artists in general. In this annual salon, dedicated to abstract art since 1946, called the “Salon des réalités nouvelles”, Ottomar Domenik played an important role. The German expert was entrusted with the task of transferring German works from their country to the Paris.
260 painters participated in the Salon, 15 of whom were German. Germany was one of the 16 countries that took part. The German painters welcomed the opportunity to leave the prison of the dictatorship, to enjoy artistic and intellectual freedom again, to meet with artists based in Paris, to connect with the creative unrest that was growing in post-liberation France. France's influence on the post-war revival of German art was decisive. Protesting Paris was and still is an international meeting center for artists from all corners of the world.
On July 22, 1948, Ottomar Domenik arrived in Paris for twelve days for the opening of the Salon, which took place the next day. Already during his visit to the Salon, which was hosted at the “Little Palace – Museum of Fine Arts in Paris” (Le Petit Palais – Musée des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris), Ottomar Domenik had his eye on the paintings of Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages. In the evening, he knocked on the door of Hartung’s studio. Later, he also visited Soulages’ studio and established many contacts with French painters or those who had settled in Paris. Thus, he laid the foundation for organizing his traveling exhibition in Germany, which was, as mentioned, an expression of gratitude to France for hosting German painters at the Abstract Salon.
All of the painters he chose to exhibit in his traveling exhibition, “French Abstract Painting” (Französische abstrakté Malerei), ten in number, participated in the “Salon des Nouvelles Realités” in 1948 in Paris:
- Francis Bott
- Felix Del Marle
- Cesar Domela
- Hans Hartung
- Auguste Herbin
- Frantisek Kupka
- Jean Piaubert
- Gerard Schneider
- Jean Ville
- Pierre Soulages
The successful exhibition, whose ninety works reflected abstract art in Paris at the time, ran for nine months, from November 1948 to July 1949, in Stuttgart, Munich, Düsseldorf, Hanover, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Freiburg. The traveling exhibition gladdened the hearts of artists and art lovers in the devastated German cities after the war, gave them hope, and distracted them from their precarious personal situation, without money, without a decent place to live, without a secure future for their children. Thus, it not only did a service to painters in France, but also paved the way for modern art in Germany. The Third Salon of Abstract Painting in Paris and the subsequent traveling exhibition in Germany did much for the cooperation between the two countries and the restoration of relations between them. Art as compensation and reparation for the horrors and injustices of history – this was the line that guided Ottomar Domenik. Pierre Soulages, whose exhibition in Germany rescued him from obscurity and poverty, was, even before his meeting with the German doctor, in a similar frame of mind, as we learned from the episode between Pétain and Franco in Montpellier.
Soulages, the youngest of the ten painters exhibited, was of particular interest in Germany. The exhibition poster was based on one of his walnut shell paintings, in two versions: a positive reproduction, black on white, and a negative reproduction, white on black. The poster, which was pasted throughout Germany in hundreds of copies, attracted much attention, especially from painters. Many of them made a pilgrimage to Soulages' studio, which was then located on Victor-Schœlcher Street in14th District (Area Montparnasse).
Pierre Soulages in America
A young American visitor brought the poster of the 1948 German exhibition and pasted it at the Artists’ Club in New York. In 1954, Picasso’s agent in the US, Sam Kootz, an influential art dealer and gallery owner on Madison Avenue, called Pierre Soulages. Ten years of American success opened up for the French painter from the small town of Rodez.
Every year, Sam Coates organizes an exhibition in honor of his protégé Soulages at his famous gallery. The greatest American artists hold party evenings in honor of the French painter. Pierre drove around the city in a sports car without a roof, with a Colt at his side. The happy couple walked through Central Park, playing with the squirrels. The greatest collectors bought Soulages' pictures, among them Hollywood celebrities such as Otto Preminger and Charles Laughton. Until in 1966, Sam Coates, who had exhausted himself by distributing abstract expressionist painters, closed his gallery in New York. The collectors looked for a way to get rid of Soulages' pictures and left them in museums. And from there to storage in their basements - the road is short. Attention is now turned to pop art, minimalism, the younger generation.
Despite the exhibition dedicated to Soulages at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (1966), his reputation declined. It was not until 1990 that the crown was restored and museum directors began to bring Soulages' paintings out of the cellars and display them again. Pierre Soulages is the most famous and valuable French painter in the world, of those still among us. And the greatest of them, so say those who know.
Thirty years of painting until 1979
This period is rich in engravings, in tar paintings on pieces of broken glass, in the famous walnut shell paintings, in brown and black. Added to these are paintings in which the color black dominates, the surfaces of which reveal and enhance sections of white, larger or smaller. In many other paintings, the light shines not only in white but also in blue, brown, orange, and yellow. Soulage would cover the canvas in blue, for example, and then put black on top. Then he would scrape off the layers of black with a leather, rubber, wooden, or plastic spatula that he had made himself, sometimes even with the sole of a shoe or some kitchen utensil, in order to achieve the blue color and even the white.
1979, Beyond Black, The Great Turning Point
One night in January 1979, Soulages was working on a canvas that was slowly filling with black. At the same time, the painter was filled with despair. It seemed to him that he was based on mud. The painting was far from his expectations. Depressed and tired, Soulages went to sleep and after an hour or two returned to painting, and then he was filled with joy. I found it! The painter had been waiting for this moment all his life. Soulages suddenly realized that he was not painting with black, but with the reflections of light through its various textures on the surface of the canvas. The painter also realized that his picture emerged from within itself and that the viewer of his picture was within it. Soulages reiterates that he is not an artist of the color black, but rather an artist of the light that is reflected and refracted through it. Lately, by the way, Pierre Soulages has been painting on a black canvas from the start, light on black.
Then, after Soulages realized on that fateful night that his art had changed, that from now on he would paint differently, according to the latest model, he invented the expression: “Black-Light” (Noir-Lumière), which was soon replaced by another expression, which took root and was associated with Soulages name: “Beyond Black” (L'Outrenoir), a paraphrase of the expression across the sea, across the river, that is, another country, another world of black, another black. Another way of seeing black. Black is, in fact, light, which touches us deeply, in the more hidden layers of the human interior. The ancients descended into dark caves to paint in black on their walls, the newborn emerges into the light of day from the depths of the cave of the womb. Black comes first of all and gives birth to everything. Black is the source. It is impossible to separate black from light.
Here is a short video in which the artist talks about the concept of “Beyond Black”:
Since that fateful night, which opened up a new and different field of possibilities for the painter, the colors have completely disappeared from his paintings. From now on, Soulages will paint only in black, in oil paint, acrylic or resin, on canvas, which will be covered entirely in shades of black. The black is not the main thing, but rather the reflections of light through it. This is the third period in Soulages' art. It was preceded by the second period in which the colors blue, brown, orange or yellow were covered in black which was then scraped off to reveal the color. It was preceded by the first period in which Soulages painted in black or brown on white paper in order to illuminate, through contrast, our hearts.
For forty years, Soulages has been applying thick layers of black paint to the canvas, with a sliding knife or a loose brush, cutting cuts in them, deep or, conversely, almost invisible. The reflection of light in the cuts varies depending on their size and the texture of the black. And not only that. The picture will look different depending on the light distributed in the exhibition hall (time of day, season of the year) and the position of the viewer (if there is an angle, the picture will change). In the triangular relationship between the artist, the picture and the viewer, the meaning of the work is mobile, which will perhaps allow the latter to bring to light the primordial black that hides in its own depths. Because what is important in Soulages' work is not the black but the reflections of light.
1986-1995, the stained glass windows in the abbey church of Sainte-Foy-de-Conce
In 1986, Pierre Soulages enthusiastically accepted the offer from the French Ministry of Culture to create 104 new stained glass windows for the abbey church of Saint-Foy-de-CunqueSoulages first conducted a careful study of the architectural structure to remove any emotions associated with his childhood memories and to clothe the church with the robes of light it deserved.
For seven years, Soulages worked on the stained glass. After hundreds of attempts, he processed glass onto which pieces of glass were welded, a technique that created semi-transparent glass. The smooth side of the glass faces the outside, its rough side faces the inside of the hall. Through this white glass, light penetrates the hall softly and naturally, blending with the tranquility of the place, allowing one to enjoy different colors, depending on the time of day, especially shades of gray, blue, orange, and red, which respond harmoniously to slate, kurkar, and ochre, the original stones of the church.
2014, Soulages Museum, Rodez
The magnificent Soulages Museum in Rodez, which was visited by over eight hundred thousand people last year, owes its creation to the abbey church of Sainte-Foy-de-Conce. The artist agreed to build the museum, which is linked to the church, mainly because of its proximity to it. Soulages could not refuse the enchanting offer that the future museum would display all his preparatory work for the execution of the stained glass windows. Pierre and Colette Soulages supervised all the construction and completion works of the museum. In 2014, after four years of work, the Soulages Museum was inaugurated in his hometown of Rodez, in the presence of the artist and other dignitaries, including the then President of France, François Hollande.
The magnificent Soulages Museum in Brod, an architectural gem with a garden, a fast food counter or a gastronomic restaurant, is a great success. The artist donated some 250 works and 250 preparatory works and documents, worth tens of millions of euros. In addition to the permanent collection, it hosts, at the request of Pierre Soulages, temporary exhibitions of various artists.
A very interesting artist, and what a long and creative life... The "limitation" or "strap" that Soulages imposes on himself in his decision to be a "monochromatic" painter is puzzling and strange, although he obviously proves in his paintings that there are many shades of black, and that he is good at finding the cracks between black and black, through which light penetrates...
I wonder what Soulage was thinking when British painter Anish Kapoor bought the exclusive rights to the blackest black paint ever created a few years ago... and which was actually created especially for him.
Thanks Edna for the response. Soulages has said many times that he opposes the use of the word “monochrome” in relation to his paintings. He does not consider himself a “monochromatic” painter. The main thing for him is the light, not the black. Also, he did not put a brace on himself, it was something that came to him from the depths of the subconscious as a surprising gift and for which he had been waiting his whole life. Therefore, it was on the contrary a liberation for him. In 1979, he found his true path. It can really seem strange and some people do not like his works that seem too gloomy to them. Personally, I was initially hesitant, but later I was filled with great enthusiasm and I felt very deeply the power and what he wanted and wants to express.
Thank you very much, Orna, for the insightful and very interesting article. Sabine
Thank you very much Sabine, I'm glad you liked the article. Continued success in your lectures on French culture. Bon bout d'an et bonne année 2020
Menashe Helman
At first glance, depressing works, thanks to Orna who opened my eyes to see the light in his works.
Orna Lieberman
Thank you very much, Menashe. In his works there are various and varied light reflections, grooves, lines, in different shapes, there is movement, change, there is life.