Emmanuel Macron will chair the ceremony which will start at 3 p.m. and will be open to the public, in the presence of members of the government and the artist’s family.
Le Monde with AFP
A week after the death of the painter Pierre Soulages of heart failure at the age of 102, a national tribute will be paid to him, Wednesday November 2 in the courtyard of the Louvre, announced on Saturday October 29 .
Emmanuel Macron will chair the ceremony which will start at 3 p.m. and will be open to the public, in the presence of members of the government and the artist’s family, internationally known in the world of painting for his paintings with infinite shades of black .
The Soulages of Rodez museum, on the other hand, will be free on Sunday, the museum said on Friday. Visitors will also be able to find a book there to leave “a testimony of condolences, for Colette Soulages and his relatives”. The Fabre museum in Montpellier, which houses a large collection of works by Pierre Soulages, will also be free throughout the weekend.
“Outrenoir”
Soulages was born on December 24, 1919 in Rodez, in a craftsman who fed his imagination in the middle of the body workshop of his father and the surrounding hills. He never cut the link with his native territory, while painting mainly from Sète (Hérault), where he had settled since the 1960s. He also had two workshops in Paris.
fascinated by prehistory from an early age, the artist had worked a lot in the nuts before continuing with his great black flattens of oil painting, which he scratched, scraped and almost modeled in the Thickness of the material, bringing up nuances of red, blue and unexpected transparencies.
He had changed in what he called “the overseas” in 1979, while he was struggling on a work entirely covered with a thick black striated by chance. “I was beyond black, in another mental field,” he said. “The pot with which I paint is black. But it is the light, diffused by reflections, which matters” he added. Large, still dressed in black, Soulages had acquired a real world famous thanks to its large canvases with a thousand shades of black. He said he sought to “bring out the light”.
one of the most rated French artists during his lifetime
For more than seventy-five years, he tirelessly traced his furrow, attracting the recognition of cultural institutions and the art market which made it one of the most rated French artists during his lifetime.
One of his 1961 canvases was sold for 20.2 million dollars in New York in November 2021. The table entitled Painting 162 x 130 cm, May 2, 1963 sold on Wednesday for almost 6 million euros , announced Sotheby’s in the evening.
He had already had the honors of a tribute to the Louvre in 2019, at the dawn of his 100th anniversary. Until then, only Picasso and Chagall had had this privilege during their lifetime. After his death, the Parisian institution had praised
The #Louvre pays tribute to Pierre Soulages, painter of black and light, traveling companion from the museum from Plu… https://t.co/k0khoonpen
– museelouvre (@museum of the Louvre)