As soon as it arrived, the information was quickly relayed by Sky TG 24.
“French painter Pierre Soulages, famous for his works in infinite shades of black, died at the age of 102, writes the Italian information site, about this artist, originally from Aveyron and very attached to his land, with which he had never broken ties.
The man, continues the transalpine media, “has traced his style for 75 years, becoming one of the most highly rated contemporary French artists in the world: one of his paintings, dating from 1961, was sold for 20.2 million dollars in New York, in last November”.
“A black crossed by lights”
His style, the international press recalls in unison today, was linked to the use of a color, black, which had become “his signature and, against all logic, a skylight”, famous in turn Time :
“Better, he had made him his privileged interlocutor. Soulages and le noir debated together, for more than half a century, on canvas and on paper, presenting the results of their controversy on picture rails around the world.
Her relationship with this color has been worked on so deeply, “that he had to find another name for it, forge a neologism, ‘outrenoir’ which seems as much to be taken from the exotic ‘overseas’ as from the disastrous ‘beyond the grave’”, still retraces the Swiss daily.
Pierre Soulages, it was black, abounds on his side The evening, “but not absolute black, dark, cavernous, unreadable. No: a luminous black, a black crossed by lights, flashes, streaks, spots, reflections, tints, reliefs”. raves the Belgian daily.
An expert analysis, even if to believe Time, the main merit of the Aveyron artist was precisely that of “gently familiarize the general public with abstract art:
“Her painting has intrigued and made people talk about her well beyond the perimeter of the art world, even though her radicalism promised her to remain impenetrable, opaque and confidential.”
What a long way for an artist who liked to tell his beginnings as “the story of a little guy from Aveyron who, one day, draws on a corner of the table while his mother is cooking”. concludes the Geneva newspaper. This sheet on which Soulages was drawing, to his mother’s great surprise, was completely filled with black. The color of which he will become the absolute master.