Stéphane Bern 5:04 p.m., October 26, 2022
French painter Pierre Soulages died Wednesday at the age of 102.
In the program "Historically yours", in May 2021, the host Stéphane Bern retraced the life of this artist known in particular for his famous canvases painted in black, from his noticed debut to the inauguration of a museum in his name in Rodez, his hometown.
>> Creator without compromise, the painter Pierre Soulages, died Wednesday at the age of 102, announced his entourage. In May 2021 in “Historically yours”, Stéphane Bern retraced the thread of his life. That of a "born artist", who enjoyed success in the 1950s. Immerse yourself in the life of the man who managed to bring out the light from pure black.
The story begins in the 1920s. Pierre Soulages was not yet 10 years old.
Seated in the living room of the family home in Rodez in the Aveyron, he draws lines in black ink on a sheet of white paper.
Someone asks him: "What are you drawing?"
And he answers: "Snow".
The child has already discovered the power of black: bringing light to life.
At over 100 years old and after an extraordinary career, Pierre Soulages has contributed to giving black its letters of nobility.
But when he was born in 1919, in the prefecture of Aveyron, black was still largely associated with mourning.
Nevertheless: when he is offered child colors, little Pierre Soulages prefers to dip his brush in the inkwell.
A childhood in a modest environment
His artistic vocation is very young.
Pierre Soulages is a born artist, driven by a desire and even a need to create that he cannot explain.
He grew up in a modest environment.
His father is a craftsman, he died young, and his mother is a trader.
It is she who pushes him to follow his vocation.
Art is the only thing worth devoting your life to, he soon realizes.
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- Painter Pierre Soulages died at the age of 102
In high school, Pierre Soulages discovers Romanesque art and is passionate about prehistoric paintings.
At 16, he discovered the bison drawings that covered the walls of the cave of Altamira, in Spain.
It's a revelation.
Men have always painted and this idea upsets him.
Above all, art does not begin in the Renaissance and cannot be summed up in the last century, as his teachers taught him.
Refusal of academicism
Soon, his refusal of academicism will manifest itself in a much more decisive way.
While he is received at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, Soulages immediately takes the train, direction Rodez.
What he saw of the school while passing the Goncourt exams horrifies him.
Classical education bores him deeply.
To earn a living and not suffer the pressure of the art market, he then thought of becoming a drawing teacher and went to study in Montpellier to prepare for it.
In the middle of the war, to escape the compulsory labor service in Germany which awaits all young French people, he obtains a position in a vineyard under a false identity.
When Soulages turns to the Salon des surindépendants
Pierre Soulages is a rebel.
He doesn't want his life dictated to him.
When the war was over, he finally decided to devote himself entirely to painting, encouraged by teachers who spotted his talent.
He already produced some of the greatest works of his life: paintings on paper using charcoal or walnut husk, a natural dye from the bark of walnuts.
These large dark canvases are refused at the Salon d'Automne.
They are too abstract, too original.
Soulages then turns to the Salon des surindépendants.
Francis Picabia, the great painter close to surrealism, noticed him and promised him: "At your age and with what you do, you will soon make many enemies", repeating the reflection that Camille Pissarro had given him addressed itself.
At 27,
Soulages was introduced to the world of Parisian art and was not worried about the reception of his work.
"Anyone talking behind me is only talking to my ass," he said mischievously.
A worldwide success
Quickly, Pierre Soulages knows the success.
He is exhibited in galleries in Paris, participates in exhibitions in Germany, London, Australia and especially in New York, capital of modernity.
In 1949, a museum, that of Grenoble, acquired one of these paintings.
The artist is only 30 years old and he is already recognized worldwide.
On his own work, however, the painter remains critical.
Heaps of paintings pile up in his studio.
Facing the wall, they wait.
Pierre Soulages looks at them from time to time, hesitating to keep them, burning those he no longer likes.
Discovery of black light, or "beyond black"
Already, black is omnipresent on the canvases.
But Pierre Soulages uses it as a contrast that reveals reds, browns, blues.
And then, one day in 1979, as if by accident, the painter had a revelation.
"One day, I was painting. Black had invaded the entire surface of the canvas, without shapes, without contrast, without transparency. The differences in texture reflected the light more or less weakly and from the darkness emanated a clarity, a pictorial light whose particular emotional power animated my desire to paint. My instrument was no longer black, but this secret light coming from black."
Pierre Soulages has just discovered the "black light" which he himself calls "the beyond-black".
It is a radical change.
From now on, his paintings will be monopigmented, but paradoxically not monochrome.
Alone, black is no longer black.
It reveals so much for the effects of light.
Soulages works on texture, opacity, matte, shine.
It is light that becomes his material, his tool.
This light comes from the painting and goes towards the spectator.
If it moves or the light moves, the work is transformed.
It evolves somehow.
For Soulages, it's a new break with classical painting, which imposes a point of view on the viewer.
Opening of the Soulages museum in Rodez
Between 1987 and 1994, the artist produced around a hundred stained glass windows for the abbey church of Conques, in his native region.
For this project, he invents a specific, very textured glass, developed in a research center in Marseille.
Some feared that Soulages made black stained glass, he designed white ones.
Once again, his work is that of light.
In 2014, the Soulages museum opened in Rodez, to which the painter donated 500 works and documents.
The whole shows the evolution of the artist, who first composed with black before completely embracing it to make a color that was said to not let light through, a color that gives birth.
But by the way, why black?
Pierre Soulages has his answer: "It's the richest color possible, the most intense. The one that also brings us back to our origins. Absolute black, that of the mother's womb, but also that of the caves. Where the art was born".