Pierre Soulages was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor. In 2014, François Hollande described him as “the world’s greatest living artist.”
Pierre Soulages Obituary
Pierre Soulages, whose searching explorations of the color black established him as France’s pre-eminent postwar abstract painter, died on Wednesday in Sète, a port city in southern France. He was 102.
His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Dominique Lévy and Emilio Steinberger, the co-founder and senior partner of LGDR, the gallery that represents Mr. Soulages in the United States.
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Mr. Soulages attracted attention in the late 1940s with a series of bold calligraphic works on paper using walnut stain or, on occasion, tar on glass. Their somber tones stood in sharp contrast to the bright colors favored by the adherents of Tachisme, France’s answer to Abstract Expressionism.