Pierre Soulages
Pierre Soulages - Original Lithograph
1970

Name: Pierre Soulages - Original Lithograph
Brand: Pierre Soulages
Price: 4174.47 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Pierre Soulages - Original Lithograph Published in the deluxe art review "XXe siècle" 1970 Unsigned as published Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm Pierre Soulages or the "painter of black" as he is often referred to, has rightfully become one of the key international figures of post-war abstraction. Since the 1940s, Soulages has been known as one of the leaders of what was then a new group of purely abstract painters known as the Ecole de Paris. For over seventy years now, Soulages has been systematically exploring the material properties of paint, pushing the boundaries of the power of expression contained within the medium. In his early work primarily dating from the early to late 1940s Soulages utilized a variety of media including walnut stain and tar which proved to be moderately successful for endeavors, however, it was not until the 1950s when he began painting with oil on canvas, and more specifically, black oil paint on canvas that he was really able to tackle his investigation with thorough execution. Soulages became transfixed with black paint, using it almost exclusively in the following decades of his career up until today. "I was always interested in black, even as a child," Soulages once stated, "I used black paint and when someone asked what I was painting I said 'snow'. I think with hindsight that I used black to make the paper look more white" (Claire Rosemberg. "Black is the new black for Pierre Soulages, France's best known living artist." The Telegraph [London] 14 October 2009). For Soulages, black is not only a color, but it is also and almost more importantly a non-color; meaning that unlike most other pigments, it contains all colors within it making it the most versatile hue that can change dramatically with light. Along with his use of black paint, Soulages' almost poetic mark-making and the formal play he creates within his compositions, imbues his paintings with an ethereal and ultimately existential quality. The sweeping and almost forceful planar brushstrokes are evocative of an American counterpart, Franz Kline. Yet, unlike Kline, Soulages' initial application of paint and further manipulation of the surface work together to form his dramatic compositions. Often Soulages would make and use his own painting implements or tools, including homemade brushes and palette knives to his own invention, a flat rubber spatula type tool known as a lame. With this these tools, Soulages would apply broad and dense layers of paint that he would then adjust by scraping, digging and etching into, resulting in a surface which brilliantly articulates a space of tension created by the play between light and dark, space and absence and the passing of time.

Creator:

Pierre Soulages (1919, French)

Creation Year:

1970

Dimensions:

Height: 12.6 in (32 cm)Width: 9.45 in (24 cm)Depth: 0.04 in (1 mm)

Medium:

Lithograph

Movement & Style:

Abstract Expressionist

Period:

1970-1979

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU161211653792

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Pierre Soulages

Pierre Soulages was born on December 24, 1919, in Rodez, France. Attracted by Romanesque art and prehistory at a young age, he began to paint. At 18, he was admitted to the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, but, convinced of the mediocrity of the education there, refused to enter. In 1946, Soulages began to paint fulltime. In 1948, he took part in exhibitions in Paris and elsewhere in Europe, including “Französische abstrakte malerei” (French abstract painting) in several German museums. He was the youngest of this group. In 1949, Soulages received a solo exhibition at the Lydia Conti gallery in Paris and group exhibitions in New York, London, Sao Paulo and Copenhagen. From 1949 to 1952, he created his first etchings. His group exhibitions in New York began traveling to other American museums, including “Advancing French Art” (1951), “Younger European Artists” Guggenheim Museum (1953), and “The New Decade,” Museum of Modern Art (1955). He also began to exhibit at the Kootz Gallery, New York, and the Galerie de France, Paris. In the early 1950s, his works were acquired by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London, the National Museum of Modern Art, Paris; and the Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, among others. In 1960, the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover, Germany, held Soulages’ first retrospective. Several retrospectives followed, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (1966). In 1979 Soulages exhibited his first single-pigment paintings based on the reflection of light by the surface states of black at the Musée National d’Art Moderne—Centre Georges Pompidou. The pictorial light arising from the difference between two darknesses in the paintings carried a great power of emotion and possibilities for development. It was later called "black-light" and "outrenoir." Soulages has since created other works where rhythm, space and light are born from the violent contact of black and white on the canvas surface . In 2001, Soulages was the first living artist invited to exhibit at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, then at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. In October 2009, the Centre Pompidou presented the largest retrospective since the beginning of the 1980s devoted to a living artist, occupying more than 2,000 square meters of space. It ranked as the fourth most attended exhibition in the history of the Centre Pompidou. That same year, the Louvre Museum exhibited a painting by Soulages in the Salon Carré in the Denon wing. In 2019, in homage to the artist for his 100th birthday, numerous events were organized in France and abroad. The Soulages exhibition at the Louvre, designed as a mini-retrospective, presented three new paintings and was accompanied by a hanging at the Musée Natinal d’Art Moderne—Centre Georges Pompidou. Today, Soulages is represented in more than 110 museums with more than 230 paintings. He is a favorite painter among his peers, French artists.