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Painter Pierre Soulages, French master of black, dies at 102
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Henry Ford of painting: French artist Pierre Soulages poses at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, on Oct. 13, 2009. Soulages died at age 102, his relatives told AFP on Oct. 26. (AFP/Fred Dufour)
F
rench abstract artist Pierre Soulages, who has died aged 102, was the Henry Ford of painting: For him there was just one color, black, and he spent a lifetime exploring the light within it.
"I love the authority of black, its severity, its obviousness, its radicalism," declared the tall painter who was himself always clad in black.
"It's a very active color. It lights up when you put it next to a dark color," he told AFP in an interview in February 2019.
Soulages's death was confirmed to AFP on Wednesday by his longtime friend Alfred Pacquement, who is also president of the Soulages museum in southern France.
Works by the best-selling French artist have commanded seven-figure sums, with a 1960 canvas of thick black stripes selling at auction at the Louvre in Paris for US$10.5 million in 2019.
A household name in France but less known internationally, his paintings hung in more than 110 museums around the world, including the Guggenheim in New York and London's Tate Gallery, with hundreds more housed in the Musee Soulages in his southern hometown of Rodez.
For his 100th birthday in December 2019, he was treated with a retrospective at the Louvre—a rare honor for a living artist.
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