When Pierre Soulages settled in Paris in 1946, it marked the beginning of his most important body of work. In Peinture of 1955, the visual principles that will remain in force throughout his career are already well in evidence. The painting is dominated by black colour, it represents nothing. It tells no stories, it remains silent. It is only through the light hitting the surface of the canvas that individual formations and gestures can be discerned, as well as an underlying red colour. It is a question of helping real light take on a true appearance. Quite unlike the artists who want to get into a state of unconscious, automatic painting, such as Karl Otto Götz, Soulages’ painting is determined and very controlled.
Pierre Soulages (1919–2022)
Peinture 130 x 162 cm, 3 avril 1955, 03.04.1955
Currently exhibited: Yes (Gallery: Boundless Painting)
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 130 x 162 cm
Inv-Nr.: B_182
Image rights: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Keywords:
Previous owner: Kootz Gallery, New York, 1955; Mr. and Mrs. Edwin E. Hokin, Highland Park, Illinois, 1955; private collection
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, Christie’s, London, 2011
Solo exhibitions:
2019
‘Pierre Soulages. Noir – Lumière. Farbe und Geste in den 1950er Jahren’, Ludwig Museum im Deutschherrenhaus, Koblenz
1966
‘Pierre Soulages, Retrospective Exhibition’, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
1962
‘Soulages’, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, Massachusetts
1956
‘Soulages’, Galerie de France, Paris, France
1955
‘Soulages’, Kootz Gallery, New York, USA
When Pierre Soulages settled in Paris in 1946, it marked the beginning of his most important body of work. In Peinture of 1955, the visual principles that will remain in force throughout his career are already well in evidence. The painting is dominated by black colour, it represents nothing. It tells no stories, it remains silent. It is only through the light hitting the surface of the canvas that individual formations and gestures can be discerned, as well as an underlying red colour. It is a question of helping real light take on a true appearance. Soulages describes his artistic endeavour so: ‘The black brings about a transformation in the light and the image which is created is multiple because, depending on the location, where you are, and depending on how the light hits it, the picture is never the same.. This constant change interests me. […] The idea behind painting black is to let light emerge from the thickly applied paint, where it gets caught in the grooves and furrows and reflected by the different surfaces of black. It is the light that comes from the colour I call black, and this black, by its very definition, represents the greatest absence of light. And this light that comes from the greatest absence of light has a meaning that moves me deeply.’ [1]
These paintings do not arise from an automatic painting process, as in the case of Karl Otto Götz, for example; this is controlled painting, full of determination. The abscence of motive is reminiscent of the silence of cloistered monks or Zen Buddhist meditations. In music, it finds an equivalent in the compositions of John Cage, who also came into contact with the teachings of Zen Buddhism in the 1950s and began to integrate silence and ambient noise into compositions.
[1] ‘Pierre Soulages. Desperately in Love with Black. A conversation with Heinz-Norbert Jocks’, in: Kunstforum International, vol. 267, May 2020, pp. 182–197, here p. 195.
