“The Painter of Black” Pierre Soulages: Life and Famous works

France: Pierre Soulages, the French abstract artist best known for painting most of his works in black, died on Tuesday at the age of 102. The museum dedicated to his life and work in his southwestern hometown of Rodez made the announcement on Wednesday.

Born in Rodez in southern France in 1929, he belonged to a generation of artists who reinvented abstract painting in Europe after the Second World War. When French hero and president Charles de Gaulle called French painting “sick,” Soulages countered that it was not sick but under “attack” and this his role was to defend it.

Since his first exhibition in 1947, when he was 27 years old, Soulages has used the color black.

“I love the authority of black, its severity, its obviousness, its radicalism,” the tall painter, who was himself always clad in black, declared to the French news agency AFP in 2019. He also told the French-German TV channel ARTE, “I do not paint with black but instead with the light.”

Many of his works did not have titles but are named after the technique used, dimensions, and the date of execution.

His art involved scraping, digging, and etching thick layers of paint with rubber, spoons, or tiny rakes to create different textures that absorb or reject light, taking him to what he called a “different country” from plain black.

His legacy included producing 1987 to 1994, 104 stained-glass windows for the Romanesque Sainte-Foy de Conques abbey.

In 1955, he took part in the first documenta art fair in the central German city of Kassel. The event has since become one of the world’s most prestigious contemporary art events.

For his 100th birthday in December 2019, he was honored by the Louvre in Paris with a solo exhibition.

He was only the third artist to have a solo show at the museum during his lifetime, joining Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso.