Pierre Soulages, Exhibition, Musee du Louvre, Paris: 11 December 2019 - 9 March 2020

This is archived material. It is for reference purposes only.

Pierre Soulage has been famous for his abstract art since the 40s. He has realised over 1,700 works and at the age of 99 he will be exhibition at the Louvre.

In 1990, Soulage organised the exhibition “Polyptychs: Multi-Panel Paintings from the Middle Ages to the 20th Century” (Hall Napoléon), in which Michel Laclotte plotted a line of descent from the medieval polyptychs to Francis Bacon, and where Soulages exhibited two paintings back to back. 

In 2009, Painting, 300 x 236 cm, 9 July 2000 was exhibited in the Louvre’s Salon Carré in conjunction with the Centre Pompidou Soulages retrospective (October 14, 2009–March 8, 2010).
In June 1969, Soulages also contributed to the new design of the Louvre’s rooms devoted to 19th-century French paintings, by choosing the color of the walls: a deep red that visitors see to this day.

Pierre Soulages opted for total abstraction from the start of his career, challenging the traditional premises of painting. It  was a singular approach, in the materials he used (for example, walnut stain and tar), in his tools which were more like those used by construction painters, in his decision to name his works according to their technique, dimensions and date of execution rather than with titles that would influence viewers’ perception of them. In 1948 he wrote already: “A painting is an organised whole, an ensemble of forms (lines, colored surfaces) upon which our interpretations of it emerge and fall apart.” 

This exhibition shows the continuity of the artist’s work and its various periods, each reflecting his ambition to bring out the light through contrasts between the color black and light areas, through layering and scraping, and in the manner of applying a single pigment.
In 1979, when he had been a painter for more than 30 years, Soulages embarked on a new phase in his work: a quite different kind of painting that he called outrenoir – “ultrablack” or “beyond black”. Soulages’ painterly experimentations had always probed the relationship between black and light, but with outrenoir, which made use of the reflection of light, the space-time of painting took on a completely new luminous multiplicity. Contrary to a monochromatic work, “it is the differences of textures, smooth, fibrous, calm, tense or agitated that, in capturing or blocking the light, bring out the grey blacks and deep blacks.”

1_Pierre Soulages_Brou de noix_ 48,2 x 63,4 cm_1946_Rodez, Musée Soulages © Archives Soulages/ADAGP, Paris 2019
1_Pierre Soulages_Brou de noix_ 48,2 x 63,4 cm_1946_Rodez, Musée Soulages © Archives Soulages/ADAGP, Paris 2019
8_Pierre Soulages_Peinture_222 x 314 cm_24 février 2008_Paris, Pierre Soulages © Archives Soulages/ADAGP, Paris 2019
8_Pierre Soulages_Peinture_222 x 314 cm_24 février 2008_Paris, Pierre Soulages © Archives Soulages/ADAGP, Paris 2019

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