The exhibition presents a group of new large-scale paintings that reveal the rigor and atemporal power of a 94-year old master known as "the painter of black and light." Fourteen recent works and seminal works created in the 1950s and 60s.
Beginning April 24th, 2014, Dominique Lévy and Galerie Perrotin will jointly present
Pierre Soulages
, the first American exhibition in ten years devoted to the most significant and
internationally recognized living
artist of France. The show will fill the historic landmark building at 909
Madison Avenue where both galleries reside, presenting a group of new large
-
scale paintings that reveal
the rigor and atemporal power of a 94
-
year old master known as “the painter
of black and light.” Born in
1919, Soulages is among the few artists still at work from the explosive postwar period when New York
City emerged as the center of the art world, the place where American innovation and European
traditions collided and coalesc
ed into a new dominant school of gestural painting. By juxtaposing
Soulages’ revelatory recent paintings with a group of his important postwar works,
Pierre Soulages
will
highlight profound interconnections between Europe and America in modern and contempo
rary art
while challenging certainties on the subject.
On view through June 27th,
Pierre Soulages
introduces fourteen recent paintings from the artist’s
ongoing
Outrenoir
series
–
metaphysically potent canvases with slashing black architectonics
--
along
side seminal works created in the 1950s and 60s, all on loan from major museums and important
private collections.
During
the years following World War II, Soulages exhibited extensively in America,
establishing friendships with New York peers Mark Rothko,
Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, and
Helen Frankenthaler, among many others. His work thrived in the U.S. market, championed by James
Johnson Sweeney, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (previously curator at The Museum
of Modern Art), and
by legendary gallerist Sam Kootz. Perhaps it was Soulages’ feeling of belonging to no
particular city or country that aided his success: He has said his only real language “was that of modern
art,” and his undiminished fascination with that language contin
ues to shape Soulages’ paintings today,
enabling him to transmit light with black.
Pierre Soulages
is accompanied by a catalogue featuring an interview with the artist by Hans Ulrich
Obrist, and essays by John Yau and Alain Badiou
. The exhibition coincides with the opening in late May
of the Musée
S
oulages in Rodez, France, the artist’s birthplace. The new museum complex will extend
the public presence of Soulages’ art in the Aveyron area of the Midi
-
Pyrénées region of Southern Fra
nce,
where in 1994 he completed a celebrated cycle of stained glass windows at the 8th century Romanesque
Abbey
-
Church of Sainte
-
Foy in Conques. Encompassing 104 unique compositions in translucent glass,
Soulages’ windows at Stainte
-
Foy are today considere
d an art pilgrimage destination.
The exhibition
Pierre Soulages
also coincides with release of the first major book devoted to the artist’s
years of intense engagement with United States. Distributed by D.A.P., ‘Soulages in America’ explores
the artist’s
work in the 1950s and 60s, delving into his presence and prominence in the U.S. during the
heyday of Abstract Expressionism, the central art movement of postwar America. Densely illustrated with
archival photographs, letters, and images of the artist’s wo
rks of the period, ‘Soulages in America’
features an essay by Harry Cooper, head of modern art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington,
D.C., as well
as an extensive interview with
Soulages by journalist Philippe Ungar. ‘Soulages in America’
examines
a pivotal moment in the artist’s career and in doing so sheds light on Soulage’s ongoing
Outrenoir
paintings, the
fruits of a highly independent t
rajectory. Soulages belongs to a generation for
whom America was synonymous with a new world with a bold new s
pirit, for which he was quick to feel
an affinity that remains in tact: “My attitude toward the history of painting was close to that of many
young American painters, who weren’t bogged down by preconceived notions.”
Opening a Mental Field: About The Exhibition
In the 1940s, Pierre Soulages made abstract works predominately in black, which he has described as
“both a color and a non
-
color.” He produced his first mature paintings in 1947, applying walnut stain in
heavy brushstrokes on a light ground. In
1948, America came knocking unexpectedly at his door in the
form of James Johnson Sweeney, who was intrigued by talk in Paris of a painter who worked in broad
black marks. By the mid
-
1950s, Soulages was painting with looser, slashing brushstrokes and began
incorporating fluid, subtle washes of color. He exhibited actively in New York and other cities in the
United States, becoming part of a community of Abstract Expressionist artists channeling the spirit of the
age into painting. Represented by the Kootz Gallery, Soulages attracted critical acclaim and drew the
attention of avid private and museum collectors across the United States. His participation in Documenta
I, II, and III (in 1955, 1959, and 1964, respectively) brought international recognition. But
when Kootz
Gallery shuttered in 1966, Soulages returned fully to Europe and to the next phase of his career.
In 1979, having already painted for over thirty years, Soulages made a dramatic break with his existing
style and embarked upon a new approach to
painting that he dubbed
Outrenoir
(the word outrenoir can
be translated loosely from French as
beyond black
). By removing other colors and concentrating almost
exclusively on black and its relationship with light, Soulages constructed a pi
ctorial space that
nevertheless
stands opposed to the monochrome in the development of Modern art. Since this
remarkable and deceptively radical mid
-
career shift of direction, Soulages has been exclusively devoted
to Outrenoir and in it has located the loc
omotive of his output. Through
Outrenoir
he envisions a type of
painting that can offer an immersive experience to the viewer, one that draws people in and engages
them in the array of textures that light and shadow create on canvas. “When light is reflect
ed on black, it
transforms and transmutes it,” Soulages once said. “It opens up a mental field all of its own.”
Thus
Outrenoir
has been a continuous 35
-
year investigation into abstraction’s power to reorganize visual
and psychological experience. Across the 1980s and 90s, and into the 21st century, and carrying the
experience of postwar breakthroughs toward the present, Soulages
has continued his investigation into
the potential of gestural blackness. Works from
Outrenoir
have become part of the history of art, joining
major museum collections in North America, Europe, Russia, and Asia. Fourteen new paintings from this
grande séri
e, made between late 2012 and early 2014, will serve as the centerpiece of
Pierre Soulages.
Soulages has stated that his only desire has been to achieve the kind of pictorial presence he found in the
caves of Lascaux and the menhirs of his birthplace, Ro
dez. The confident experimental strokes of the
earlier works on view in Pierre Soulages reveal themselves as part of a clear progression toward
Outrenoir
’s evocations of chiseled stone, dark landscape and desiccated flesh. Among key examples on
view in the
exhibition are pictures form the 1950s, bearing the artist’s signature titles derived from the
dimensions of his works
–
paintings such as ‘Peinture 195 x 130 cm, 2 juin, 1953’ (1953) and the
beautiful ‘Peinture 195 x 130 cm, 1955’ (1955), which is on loa
n to the exhibition from the National
Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Soulages’ most recent paintings align him still with American Abstract
Expressionism and the well
-
known American artists who were his postwar peers
–
figures who also built
upon memor
ies and biographical pre
-
occupations. For example, de Kooning never lost touch with his
Rubensian women, nor did Clyfford Still lose his vivid connection with the Pacific Northwest and
Canadian landscapes. There is a similar narrative undercurrent to Soula
ges’ newest work. Large
-
scale
recent paintings on view in Pierre Soulages, including ‘Peinture 128 x 181 cm, 14 février 2012’ (2012),
‘Peinture 181 x 162 cm, 26 janvier 2014’ (2014), and ‘Peinture 293 x 165 cm, 23 décembre
2013’(2013), hint at memories of
a hardscrabble youth spent in rural wartime France, in the harsh and
beautiful country that is the Aveyron area. Such references are reduced by the artist’s brush to an extreme
clarity that in turn suggests the transformation of suffering into transcendence.
More informations:
Héloïse Le Carvennec - Galerie Perrotin - heloise@perrotin.com
Opening Reception: Thursday, 24 April, 6-8PM
Galerie Perrotin
909 Madison Avenue & 73rd Street
Upper East Side, New York, NY 10021
Hours:
Tuesday - Saturday, 10am - 6pm