Biography

Pierre Soulages is a French artist whose thick black brushstrokes—labeled outrenoir (beyond black)—against lighter backgrounds have characterized his painting and printmaking practice since the late 1940s. Part of the movement towards abstraction with Jean Fautrier and Hans Hartung in Paris, his gestural paintings echoed the Abstract Expressionist movement emerging simultaneously in the United States. His strong application of pigment in non-representational forms is said to have been influenced by the prehistoric and Romanesque art near his childhood home. Soulages became the first contemporary artist to be shown at St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum in 2001. Born on December 24, 1919 in Rodez, France, Soulages currently lives and works between Paris and Sète, France. The artist donated 500 works to the Musée Soulages that opened in his hometown in 2014.