Pierre Soulages

Pierre Soulages was a French painter and printmaker celebrated as one of the leading figures of postwar abstraction. Born in Rodez, he moved to Paris in the 1940s, where he became associated with the École de Paris. Early on, his work was marked by bold black forms set against luminous grounds, establishing a vocabulary of contrast, rhythm, and light that would define his career.

From the late 1970s, Soulages developed his signature concept of Outrenoir (“beyond black”), a radical exploration of black as a material and as a revealer of light. His monumental canvases, where surfaces are worked with brushes, knives, and scrapers, create infinite variations of reflection and depth. Exhibited worldwide and honored with major retrospectives at the Centre Pompidou, the Musée du Louvre, and leading museums abroad, Soulages is recognized as one of the most influential European abstract painters of the 20th and 21st centuries.