Caen (AFP)

A painting by Pierre Soulages that belonged to the poet, academician and former president of Senegal Léopold Sédar Senghor was sold for nearly 1.5 million euros on Saturday in Caen, according to the organizer Caen Enchères.

This abstract oil on canvas made up of large black lines, reminiscent of a sort of asymmetrical totem pole, on an almost golden yellow background, was sold for 1.21 million euros, or 1.48 million with costs, during 'an auction.

The work was acquired by a "European buyer" who bid by telephone, according to Caen Enchères, who did not wish to give more details.

There were seven bidders, six of them by phone, but no museum was in the running.

"It's a very good price for a painting of this size," said Caen Enchères.

On sale at a starting price of 600,000 euros, the work was estimated "from 800,000 to one million euros", according to the auction house.

Entitled “Painting 81 x 60 cm, December 3, 1956”, it had been acquired by Léopold Sédar Senghor that year during a visit to the artist's studio in Paris, recalls Caen Enchères.

Soulages made a very similar one a month later, according to the same source.

Potential foreign buyers came from Switzerland and Germany.

The legatee of the work, who wishes to remain anonymous, is a friend of the sister of the wife of the poet who died in 2001. Disappeared in turn in 2019, Colette Senghor bequeathed the painting to her sister who died a year later.

Hanging for a long time in the office of Léopold Sédar Senghor in Verson, near Caen, where the couple lived from the 1980s, the work is characteristic of the painter's work in the 1950s, before he passed to the outrenoir , this universe imagined by Soulages in 1979 when he took the turn of complete black.

In 2019, a Soulages reached 9.6 million euros (including costs) at auction in Paris.

The former Senegalese president was a fervent admirer of the painter, now 101 years old, and considered the greatest living French artist.

© 2021 AFP