Visual Arts

A contemporary of the American Abstract Expressionists and of artists working in Paris like his colleague and lifetime friend Zao Wou-Ki, Soulages has remained a key figure in the international developments of contemporary art for seven decades. Throughout his career, Soulages has explored the poetic possibilities of his radical approach to abstraction, which he continues to pursue as an active painter. His striking Outrenoir paintings—a term invented by Soulages which translates as “beyond black”—is an ongoing body of work that examines the physical and psychological qualities of visual experience through the use of black paint.

Applying dense layers of pigment to his Outrenoir works, Soulages treats black as a material—a conductor of light and dark—rather than as a color to be used in the service of representation. As the artist declared: “I love the authority of black, its gravity, its obviousness, its radicalism. Its potent power of contrast gives an intense presence to all colors, and when it lights up the darkest of them, it endows them with a dark grandeur. Black has unsuspected possibilities and, attentive to what I do not know, I set out to find them.”