"I do not represent. I present.”
A major figure in abstraction, Pierre Soulages is one of the great masters of French painting. The year 1979 tipped Soulages into a new creative phase, cancerized by the neologism invented by the artist of the "outrenoir". Over the years, colors other than black are added to the composition, but always in a desire to emphasize the effects of light on the pictorial material. Soulages does not work with the pigment, because it is the light that interests him, the one that is reflected on the surface of this black color, a surface that he varies. What interests him is this particular quality of light when it is reflected by black which is at the same time extreme, dark, but also a luminous color. Soulages’s work has a meditative quality; the artist has affirmed his interest in Zen and oriental cultures. He does not seek to represent reality, painting and allowing himself to be guided by his freedom, renouncing any lyrical excess.