Pierre Soulages, the Painter of Black Light, Dies at 102

Pierre Soulages, who died in 2022 aged 102, devoted his life to black. From the late 1970s he painted almost exclusively in it, scoring and furrowing thick layers so the surface caught and threw back the light — a style he called 'outrenoir', beyond black.

Far from gloomy, his canvases shimmer and shift as you move past them, the darkness alive with reflected brightness. France revered him as its greatest living painter.

A museum dedicated to his work opened in his home town of Rodez in 2014. Proof that a single colour, in the right hands, can contain an entire universe of light.

Image: “France Occitanie 12 Rodez Soulages 01” — Calips, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.