May 14, 1968 220×366cm Oil on Canvas 1968 Centre Pompidou Collection

Pierre Soulage (P. Soulage, 1919–) is one of the most representative painters of lyrical abstraction in France during the 1950s. Since 1946, he has developed a painting style with calligraphic forms, constructed through contrasts of light and dark (black and white), typically manifested on vertical or parallel broad surfaces. This vibrant, dense black large-scale work is characteristic of Soulage’s spacious compositions from the 1960s. Here, Soulage removes the phenomenological subjectivity of painting, developing an obscure and mysterious “black light” from this thick, rich blackness.