Pierre Soulages

Pierre Soulages, born in Rodez in 1919 and died in 2022 at 102, was the leading French abstract painter of the postwar era. From the late 1940s he worked with broad black strokes on light grounds, and from 1979 developed Outrenoir, paintings in which light reflects off textured black surfaces. He was shown early in New York by Samuel Kootz, collected by MoMA and the Guggenheim, and in 2019 became the third living artist after Picasso and Chagall to have a show at the Louvre. A museum devoted to him opened in Rodez in 2014. His market is deep and international, with strong demand in Asia; the record of about 20.1 million dollars was set at Sotheby's New York in November 2021.