Pierre Soulages, world star of French painting known for his paintings in infinite shades of black, died overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday at the age of 102.
The painter’s death occurred due to heart failure, Mohamed Kaoud, Soulages butler in Sète for 27 years, told AFP. His widow, a centenarian, “is holding on, but perhaps hasn’t quite realized yet”, he added.
The couple had just “celebrated their 80th wedding anniversary,” said Alfred Pacquement, longtime friend and president of the museum that bears his name in Rodez, in the southern department of Aveyron.
Mr. Pacquement, one of the art historians and curators who has probably worked the most on the work of Soulages, in particular by organizing the tribute paid to him at the Louvre in 2019.
“Sadness on learning of the death of Pierre Soulages,” tweeted Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne. “He leaves behind him an immense work that crosses time”, she added, also qualifying the great painter as “incredible reinventor of black and master of lights”.
It is “a great loss for the art world and for France”, reacted the Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak.
Tall, always dressed in black, Soulages acquired worldwide fame thanks to his large canvases in a thousand shades of black. He said he was trying to “bring out the light”.
For more than 75 years, he tirelessly traced his path, attracting the recognition of cultural institutions and the art market which made him one of the most highly rated French artists during his lifetime.
One of his paintings from 1961, corresponding to his red period, was sold for 20.2 million US dollars in New York in November 2021.
He was also represented at the international contemporary art fair Paris + Art Basel, last week, alongside a Picasso or a Kandinsky, as well as the young emerging world scene.
“He painted until the end, until a few weeks ago”, declared, very moved, Benoît Decron, the director of the Soulages museum in Rodez, joined by AFP.
Fascinated by prehistory from an early age, he worked a lot with walnut stain before continuing with his large black flat areas of oil paint, which he scraped, scratched and modeled almost in the thickness of the paint, bringing out shades of red, blue and unexpected transparencies.
He had fallen into what he called “outrenoir” in 1979, when he was painting on a work entirely covered in thick black, streaked by chance.
“I was beyond the dark, in another mental field,” he said. “The pot I paint with is black. But it is the light, diffused by reflections, that matters”.