- The France will pay a national tribute to the painter Pierre Soulages at the Louvre
For more than 75 years, he tirelessly traced his path, attracting the recognition of cultural institutions and the art market that made him one of the most highly rated French artists during his lifetime.
One of his 1961 paintings was sold for $20.2 million in New York in November 2021.
Pierre Soulages had already had the honors of a tribute to the Louvre in 2019, at the dawn of his 100th birthday.
Until then, only Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall had had this privilege during their lifetime.
The ceremony, presided over by French President Emmanuel Macron, will be held Wednesday, November 2 at 3 p.m. in the square courtyard of the prestigious Parisian museum.
It will be open to the public.
A national tribute to the painter Pierre Soulages will be paid Wednesday at the Louvre in Paris, a week after his death at the age of 102, the French presidency announced on Saturday.
Emmanuel Macron will preside over the ceremony that is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. in the square courtyard of the famous museum, in the presence of members of the government and the family of the artist known worldwide for his paintings in infinite shades of black. It will be open to the public.
Born on December 24, 1919 in an artisan environment that nourished his imagination, Pierre Soulages died Tuesday night of heart failure.
Fascinated by prehistory from an early age, the artist had worked extensively with walnut husk before continuing with his large black areas of oil paint, which he scraped, scraped and modeled almost in the thickness of the paint, bringing out shades of red, blue and unexpected transparencies.
He sought to bring out the light of the dark
He had switched to what he called “the outrenoir” in 1979, when he was struggling on a work entirely covered in a thick black, streaked by chance.
“I like the authority of the black, its gravity, its obviousness, its radicality (…). Black has unsuspected possibilities,” said the artist.
Tall, always dressed in dark, Soulages had acquired a real world fame thanks to his large canvases with a thousand shades of black. He said he was trying to “bring out the light.”
AFP
