Soulages (The Hermann Genius Pocket Guide)

Enter the powerful and meditative world of Pierre Soulages (1919–2022), the French abstract painter celebrated for his lifelong investigation of black, surface, texture, and reflected light. This pocket guide traces his development from early calligraphic compositions to the groundbreaking “Outrenoir” paintings that made black not an absence of color, but a source of shifting illumination. Learn what to look for in Soulages’s ridges, grooves, broad gestures, material surfaces, and changing effects as light moves across a work. Biographical insights, engaging anecdotes, a personal portrait, and memorable quotations reveal the patience, independence, and philosophical depth behind his practice. A focused examination of one significant painting demonstrates how texture and light create an experience that changes with the viewer’s position. Featuring more than 65 full-color reproductions, this elegantly designed volume introduces one of Europe’s most important postwar artists and his radically focused vision.

Pierre Soulages was a French painter and printmaker celebrated for his lifelong exploration of black and its interaction with light. He developed what he called “Outrenoir,” or “beyond black,” using textured black surfaces to reflect, absorb, and transform surrounding illumination. His radical concentration on material, gesture, and light made him a major figure in postwar abstraction and one of the most internationally significant French artists of his generation.