ArtMYN, IESA arts&culture Partner, Celebrates Pierre Soulages' 100th Birthday!

The master of outrenoir, Pierre Soulages, celebrates his 100th birthday.

The French painter saw one of his canvases soar to nearly 10 million euros on Wednesday, November 27, 2019. He will celebrate his 100th birthday on December 24 with an exhibition at the Louvre.

A 1960 canvas by Pierre Soulages was sold on Wednesday, November 27 for 9.6 million euros (fees included) at the Tajan auction house in Paris, well above the starting estimate of between 4 and 6 million euros, setting a world record for a work by the soon-to-be-centenarian artist, ahead of his exhibition at the Louvre.

Peinture, 200 x 162 cm, 14 mars 1960 strikingly illustrates the change taking place in Pierre Soulages’s work at the dawn of the 60s, as he established himself as one of the major figures of his generation. It is a superb example of the scraping technique initiated by the artist in the late 50s. On the canvas coated with a white primer, broad bands of black paint cover part of the surface. Then, using brushes, Soulages uncovers part of the background, revealing the underlying ochre layer in an interplay of transparencies, thus offering an infinite variation of colors with unexpected luminosities.
This masterly work has been exhibited many times since its creation. In 1960, first at the Galerie de France and then in the traveling retrospective, key to the dissemination of Pierre Soulages’s work in Europe, organized by Werner Schmalenbach. More recently, it was unveiled at the exhibition devoted to Soulages at the Musée national d’art moderne/Centre Pompidou, Soulages in 2009-2010.
Peinture, 200 x 162 cm, 14 mars 1960 is also exceptional for its prestigious provenance. Indeed, it was acquired by James Johnson Sweeney, a former curator at MoMA and then director of the Guggenheim in New York, in the very year of its creation and has remained in the same family ever since. Since meeting in Paris in 1948, the two men forged strong bonds of friendship, and Sweeney greatly contributed to the recognition of Pierre Soulages across the Atlantic.