Beschreibung:

Pierre Soulages (Rodez 1919) Lithographie No. 36 (1974) Signed lower right Numbered 89/95 lower left Lithograph in colours, 51.8 x 66.5 cm (image size) / 55.7 x 73.6 cm (sheet size) Literature: Encrevé/Miessner cat. no. 85 Note: Pierre Soulages is a French non-figurative artist whose thick black brushstrokes – labeled 'outrenoir' (beyond black) – against lighter backgrounds have characterized his painting and printmaking practice since the late 1940s. He has been part of the movement towards abstraction, together with Jean Fautrier and Hans Hartung in Paris. Soulages refutes the often-made reference with Abstract Expressionism, since these artists sought to express their emotions on canvas. The artist's gestural paintings on the other hand invite the viewer to experience their own inner emotions through his work. The 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 is known as the 'painter of black': owing to his interest in the colour "both as a colour and a non-colour. When light is reflected on black, it transforms and transmutes it. It opens a mental field all of its own." He sees light as a work material; striations of the black surface of his paintings enable him to reflect light, allowing the black to come out of darkness and into brightness, thus becoming a luminous colour. Soulages became the first contemporary artist to be shown at St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum in 2001. The artist donated 500 works to the Musée Soulages that opened in his hometown Rodez, France, in 2014. Currently an exhibition about Soulages oeuvre is held at the Louvre until 9 March 2020.