Pierre Soulages obituary | Artwork

The French summary painter Pierre Soulages, who has died aged 102, turned black into an obsession, remodeling it from the absence of sunshine into a color in its personal proper. On the ground of his Left Financial institution studio in Paris, he produced massive, shiny canvases flooded with black – or what he described as outrenoir or “past black”. With specifically ready brushes, palette knives and home implements, Soulages created advanced textures, combining areas of smoothness and roughness and digging deep traces into the thick, layered paint.

For Soulages the tactile values in his work, in addition to his associated summary bronze reliefs, weren’t as necessary because the methods during which the surfaces absorbed or mirrored gentle. These results have been extraordinarily enticing to collectors and the broader public alike. Though Soulages claimed to be astonished by this recognition, it’s maybe not exhausting to elucidate. Black by no means goes out of vogue – and no tremendous artist in historical past higher understood the significance of choosing the proper end, matt or gloss.

Soulages was all the time a chic determine, wearing garments as darkish as his portray, however for him noir was not merely an adjunct. He informed the story that as a toddler of six he was discovered drawing thick traces with a brush and black ink. When requested what he was making, he replied: “Snow.”

This fascination with black and its luminous potential led him in later life to create some outstanding juxtapositions. On the flip of the twenty first century he used collage to make a collection of compositions consisting of horizontal black and white strips. The optical brilliance was hanging even when the explosions of black paint appeared to overwhelm the swathes of white.

The traditional duality of sunshine and darkish was subverted in 2012-13 when he exhibited two works, one black and one white, first on the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon after which on the Villa Medici in Rome. The black floor of 1 canvas was lit up by white traces, whereas the ridges of paint within the neighbouring image solid delicate shadows on to the whiteness.

Soulages additionally every so often launched main colors, although the impact was not precisely uplifting. Early in his profession indignant reds appeared within the in any other case black Etching No 2 (1952), which is within the Tate assortment, and sombre blues merge into the blackness of a few of his late works. As ever, their titles, equivalent to Portray 81 x 130 cm, 26 April 2002 (within the Museum Liaunig, Neuhaus), enable the viewer a free rein in interpretation.

The moments of color have been hanging however transient. Completely black canvases have been the keynote of Soulages’ profession. As he put it in 2005: “Earlier than gentle, the world and issues have been in essentially the most full obscurity. With gentle the colors have been born. Black is anterior to them. Anterior additionally for every of us, earlier than delivery, ‘earlier than having seen the day’. These notions of origin are buried deep inside us.”

Soulages was born in Rodez within the Aveyron district of southern France. Though later he was related to the coastal space of Montpellier and Sète in Languedoc-Roussillon the place he had a summer time studio, he was profoundly affected by his youth within the Aveyron. He was particularly impressed as a toddler by the realm’s menhirs, which he noticed on the Musée Fenaille, and Romanesque church buildings, whose affect may later be seen in his austere, relief-like work.

Like his sister, Antoinette, Pierre overcame early setbacks, above all of the demise when he was 5 of his father, Amans, simply after he had opened a searching and fishing store on the bottom flooring of the household dwelling. Antoinette, who was 15 years older than her brother, turned a instructor of philosophy, and though his mom, Aglaé, needed him to be a health care provider, Pierre single-mindedly pursued an aristic profession.

In 1938 Soulages went to Paris, the place he joined the educating studio of René Jaudon. After seeing exhibitions of Cézanne and Picasso, he determined to desert his place on the École des Beaux-Arts and return dwelling. He was mobilised in 1940, earlier than working as a farmer close to Montpellier and attending town’s artwork faculty, the place he met Colette Llaurens, whom he married in 1942.

Soulages shortly resumed his profession on the finish of the struggle and, on transferring again to Paris in 1946, threw himself into the vanguard of expressive abstraction. In 1947 he participated in a present in Paris on the Salon des Surindépendants. This was a interval of renewed worldwide cooperation, and Soulages exhibited as early as 1948 in Stuttgart and two years later on the Gimpel Fils gallery in London.

From the outset he had necessary contacts with British artists, notably Patrick Heron – a relationship that featured in a 2016 present on the Waddington Custot gallery in London.

It was the US, nevertheless, that exerted the strongest affect. At this stage Soulages was creating daring black strokes on gentle backgrounds, inviting comparability with Franz Kline, though his model was really extra delicate and calligraphic. From his first exhibition on the Betty Parsons gallery in New York in 1949, Soulages was a success with American collectors and main museums. This golden interval lasted all through the 50s and into the 60s till his American seller, Samuel M Kootz, closed his gallery in 1966. With the rise of pop artwork and different tendencies, abstraction fell out of favour.

Exterior the US, Soulages’ success continued unabated within the 60s and 70s. His tasks ranged from a stained glass piece of 1965-66 for the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum in Aachen, which has been described as an “icon of the evening”, to an exhibition in Dakar (1974) praised for its African rhythms. Soulages’ abstraction leant itself to a variety of interpretations.

In 1979 Soulages devised his first outrenoir work, displayed in a present on the Pompidou Centre, the place most of the works have been hung from wires within the centre of the room. This coup de théâtre was adopted by public commissions, notably in 1986 the 104 stained glass home windows for the Romanesque abbey of Sainte-Foy at Conques, 40 kilometres from his birthplace. Delicately complementing the hues of the encircling stone, they fulfilled Soulages’ purpose of making a diffuse gentle: “A residing gentle, you may say, held within the glass itself.”

The mission was so engrossing that in 1992-94 Soulages stopped portray altogether as he accomplished the home windows. By the tip of the last decade, nevertheless, he had returned to the black monumental canvases that have been to dominate the remainder of his profession. In 2009-10 he had a second retrospective on the Pompidou Centre, which was the museum’s largest exhibition of a residing artist, attracting half 1,000,000 guests. The retrospective Soulages on the Louvre marked his a hundredth birthday.

Maybe much more important have been the brand new everlasting collections of Soulages’ work. A bit dedicated to his artwork was added to the Musée Fabre in Montpellier for its reopening in 2007, and by 2012 he had donated almost 500 work to the Soulages Museum in his beloved birthplace, Rodez.

He’s survived by Colette.