Pierre Soulages

Pierre Soulages is a French painter, born the December 24th 1919 with Rodez (Aveyron), specialist in the black-light , the in addition to-black .

Biography of Pierre Soulages

Born in 1919, Pierre Soulages loses her father in 1924. As of its more young age, it is fascinated by the old stones, materials patinated and eroded by time, the craft industry of its country of the Rouergue and its rough landscapes, particularly the Causses. It is just eight years old when it answers a friend of its older sister who asks him what it is drawing with ink on a white sheet: a landscape of snow. “What I wanted to do with my ink, says it, it was to return the white of paper even whiter, more luminous, like snow. It is at least the explanation which I now give. ”

To twelve years, its teacher takes it along, with his class, to visit the Holy-Foy abbey of Conques, where its passion of the Romanesque art appears and the confused desire to become an artist. He accompanies in his research a local archeologist and discovers itself with the foot of a dolmen of the arrowheads and prehistoric shards of potteries which enter to the Musée Fenaille of Rodez. He receives also the emotional shock of the cave paintings of the caves of the Pech-Blackbird in the Lot, of Make-with-Gaume in the Dordogne, of Altamira in Cantabrie (Spain), then of Lascaux in the Dordogne (discovery in 1940).

He starts to paint in his native Aveyron before “going up to Paris” at eighteen years to prepare the professorship of drawing and the entrance examination to the school of the fine arts. He is allowed there in 1938 but he is quickly discouraged by the mediocrity of teaching that one there receives and goes back to Rodez. During this short stay in Paris, he attends the Musée of Louvre and sees exposures of Cézanne and Picasso which is for him revelations.

He is mobilized in 1940 but is demobilized as of 1941. He settles in free zone, with Montpellier, and attends assiduously the Musée Fabre. Refractory with STO in 1942, it passes the remainder of the war near vine growers of the area who hide it.

In 1946, it settles in the Parisian suburbs and is devoted from now on entirely to painting. It starts to paint abstract fabrics where the black dominates. It exposes them to the Salon of independent the in 1947, where its dark fabrics clash in the middle of the others, very coloured: “You will be made much enemies”, prevents it then Picabia. It finds a workshop in Paris, Rue Schoelcher, close to Montparnasse.

Starting from 1948, it takes part in exposures to Paris and in Europe, in particular in “Französische abstrakte malerei”, in several German museums, at the sides of the first Masters of the Abstract art like Kupka, Domela, Herbin, etc In 1949, it obtains its first personal exposure to the gallery Lydia Conti in Paris; it also exposes to the gallery Otto Stangl, of Munich, with l´occasion of the foundation of the group Zen 49. In 1950, it appears in collective exposures to New York, London, Sao Paulo, Copenhagen. Other exposures of group presented to New York travel then in several American museums, like “Advancing French Art” (1951), “Younger European Artists” (Musée Guggenheim, 1953), “The New Decade” (Museum off Modern Art of New York, 1955). It exposes regularly to the Kootz gallery of New York and the Galerie from France in Paris. As of the beginning of the Years 1950, Its fabrics start to enter the largest museums of the world like the Philips Gallery to Washington, the Musée Guggenheim and the Museum off Modern Art of New York, the Tate Gallery London, the National museum of Modern art of Paris, the Museu de Arte moderna of Rio de Janeiro, etc Aujourd'hui, more than 150 of its paintings are in the museums. In 1960 take place its first exposures retrospective in the museums of Hanover, Essen, Zurich, $the Hague. Many others will follow.

Of 1949 with 1952, Soulages carries out three stage sets and ballets and its first engravings with the Eau-forte with the Lacourière workshop.

In January 1979, Soulages while working on a table adds, withdraws black during hours. Not knowing what more to make, it leaves the workshop, disabled. When it returns two hours there later: “The black had very invaded, so much so that it was as if there did not exist any more”. This experiment marks a turning in its work. The same year, it exposes to the Center Georges-Pompidou his first paintings monopigmentaires, founded on the reflection of the light on surface qualities of the black, called “in addition to-black later”.

It is one of the personalities at the origin of the creation of the television channel Arte.

Between 1987 and 1994, it constructs 104 stained glasses for the church Abbatiale of Conques.

He is the first alive artist invited to expose to the museum of the Hermitage of Saint-Pétersbourg, then with the Galerie Tretiakov of Moscow (2001).

In 2006, a Composition of 1959 is sold 1 200 000 euros at Sotheby' S.

In 2007, the Musée Fabre of Montpellier devotes a room to him to present the donation made by the painter to the city. This donation includes/understands 20 tables of 1951 with 2006 among which major works of the Années 1960, two large in addition to-black of the large Années 1970 and several Polyptyque S.

Work

Its painting close to the abstract style of Hans Hartung with a restricted pallet of which the effects of clearly-obscure are perceptible including in transparency. I do not depict, I paint”.

Its tables make much call also to mini-reliefs, notches, furrows in the black matter which create at the same time plays of light and… colors. Because it is not the black color itself which is the subject of its work, but well the light which it reveals and organizes: it is thus a question of reaching one beyond the black, from where the term of in addition to-black used to qualify its tables since the end of the Années 1970.

“Its giant fabrics, often declined into polyptyques, do not show anything which is external for them nor return to anything else only themselves. In front of them, the spectator is assigned frontally, included in the space which they secrete, seized by the intensity of their presence. A physical, tactile, sensual presence and releasing a formidable energy contained. But metaphysical also, which forces with interiority and the meditation. A painting of deaf materiality and forces, and, all at the same time, d'" immatière" changing and vibrating which does not cease changing according to the angle by which it is approached. ”

Recently, other works appeared where rate/rhythm, space and light are born from the contacts violent one of the black and the white on the whole surface of the fabric.

Quotations

“When I started to paint, I was 5 years old, I liked that. And what surprised people, it is that I preferred, when me colors were given, to soak my brush in the inkpot… because I liked this color, I liked the black. ” (Discussion with Christophe Donner, COp cit. , 2007, p. 48)

“I like the authority of the black. It is a color which does not compromise. A color forces but which however encourages with interiorization. At the same time color and not-color. When the light is reflected there, it transforms it, transmutes it. It opens a mental field which is clean for him. ” (quoted by Francoise Jaunin, Article cit. )

“After a whole black tree in winter it is a kind of abstract sculpture. What interested to me was the layout of the branches, their movement in space…”

“I want that which looks at the table is with him, not with me. I want that he sees what there is on the fabric. Anything else. The black is formidable for that, it reflects. The movements which count they are those of that which looks at. ” (Discussion with Christophe Donner, COp cit. , 2007, p. 52)

“work saw glance that one carries to him. It is limited neither so that it is nor with that which produced it, it is also made that which looks at it. My painting is a space of questioning and of meditation where the directions that one lends to him can come to be done and to demolish itself. ” (quoted by Francoise Jaunin, Article cit. )

“It is necessary to look at the table by appreciating the light reflected by black surface. It is essential. If only black is seen, it is that the fabric is not looked at. If, on the other hand, one is more attentive, one sees reflected light by the fabric. The space of the latter is not on the wall, it is in front of the wall, and we who look at, we are in this space. It is a relation with space different from that which we have in traditional painting. This phenomenon cannot be photographed. The photograph transforms this light into a banal painting where the values fixed and are produced by gray different. ” (Discussion with Jean Pierrard, Article cit. )

“More the means are limited, plus the expression is strong. ” (quoted in: Discussion with Jean Pierrard, Article cit. )

“the practice is inseparable from the art which is done day with it. In other words, the bottom and the form do only one. I did not cease inventing instruments, generally in the urgency. Not managing more to produce something, I seize what I have under the hand. ” (Discussion with Jean Pierrard, Article cit. )

Relieve: “Young person, my parents wished that I would be surgeon. ” Sylvain Scapa: “But you are a surgeon of the heart! ” (Discussion with D S. Scapa)

References

Sources

Pierre Soulages, “Discussion with Jean Pierrard”, the Point , March 31st, 2003, n° 1585 p. 100
Pierre Soulages, “Discussion with Christophe Donner”, Le Monde 2 , February 3rd, 2007, pp. 48-52
Francoise Jaunin, Pierre Soulages, lights “to outrenoir” , article on the official site of the French ministry of the Foreign affairs
Biographical note on the Official site of Pierre Soulages

External bonds

Official site of Pierre Soulages
Xavier Domino, Pierre Soulages and Gerard Fromanger, in black series , article on the www.artelio.org site, December 9th, 2002

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