
Pierre Soulages, born 1919 in Rodez, France, is recognised as one of the major figures of abstract art and the greatest painter of the contemporary French art scene. Influenced as a youth by Celtic carvings in the local museum and by the Romanesque art and architecture of the surrounding region, he began to take an interest in art. He went to Paris in 1938, where he saw the exhibitions of Picasso and Cézanne, and briefly studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. Returning back to his hometown after his stay in Paris, he met Sonia Delaunay, with whom he discovered abstract art. In 1946, after the war, he moved again to Paris, where he met artists like Domela, Picabia, Hartung und Léger and successfully exhibited in the Salon of the Surindépendants the next year. In 1948 he took part in the pioneering exhibition Französische abstrakte Malerei ("French Abstract Painting"), which was shown in Stuttgart, Hamburg, Duesseldorf and beyond. He was the youngest of a group of masters of abstract art, including such names as Kupka, Domela and Herbin. His participation in documenta 1 (1955), documenta 2 (1959) and documenta 3 (1964) brought him recognition in artistic and critical circles.
In 1979, Soulages, who had already been painting for three decades, embarked on a new phase with works he called Outrenoir, based on the light reflected from a surface entirely covered in black. Using only black and working on the relation between black and light, Pierre Soulages constructed a pictorial space that – despite his reliance on one single colour - stands opposed to the monochrome in the development of modern art. Self-taught and independent of any artistic movement, he explored the painter's means of expression and developed his own non-descriptive and poetic style. Pierre Soulages lives and works in Sète and Paris. In May 2014, the Musée Pierre Soulageswas opened in his home town of Rodez.
Exhibitions
Publications
Works
Exhibitions
Museum Frieder Burda, Baden Baden, Germany
Alisan Fine Arts Central, Central, Hong Kong
Musée Fenaille, Rodez, France
Retrospective, Musée du Louvre, Pyramide, Paris, France
Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne, Germany
Museum Ludwig im Deutschherrenhaus, Koblenz, Germany
Musée Picasso, Antibes, France
EPFL, Espace d'expérimentation muséale ArtLab, Lausanne, Switzerland
Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany
Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, France
Galerie Perrotin & Dominique Lévy Gallery, New York, NY, USA
Museum Pierre Soulages, Rodez, France (Inauguration exhibition on the occasion of the opening of the Pierre Soulages Museum)
Villa Medici, Rome, Italy
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, France
Les Abattoirs de Toulouse, Toulouse, France
Galerie Boisserée, Cologne, Germany
KUNSTKABINETT Regensburg, Germany
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France
Galerie Karsten Greve AG, St. Moritz, Switzerland
Museum Art Plus, Donaueschingen, Germany
Galerie Karsten Greve AG, St. Moritz, Switzerland
Galerie Karsten Greve AG, St. Moritz, Switzerland
Galerie Karsten Greve AG, St. Moritz, Switzerland
Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, France
Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France
Galerie Karsten Greve AG, St. Moritz, Switzerland
de Sarthe Gallery, Paradise Valley, AZ, USA
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA
Grimaldi Forum Monaco, Monaco
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France
Musée Rath, Geneva, Switzerland
Essl Museum – Kunst der Gegenwart, Klosterneuburg, Austria
Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-Vence, France
Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France