Lot 43 D

Pierre Soulages’ abstract art is based on the desire for the deepest possible painterly and spiritual intensity. He picks up on experiences and images from the past and transfers them to the canvas with powerful conciseness. His painting is the expression of an internal conflict of which the artist himself became aware only after the painting process had been completed.
“What I do teaches me about what I am searching for. Painting always stems from reflection.” (cited from: Pierre Soulages, exhib.cat. Kestner-Gesellschaft Hanover 1960/61, p. 9).
An earlier starting point lay within the reduced reproduction of bare trees during winter which served as a preparation for the linear light-dark contrasts of his later work. Around 1946, the artist abandoned figurative representations entirely. The solid graphic networks of lines that now emerged became freer over the years and increasingly played with the contrast between density and permeability. From the end of the 1950s onwards, black strips of colour covered the picture ground in flowing gestural sweeps, sometimes overlapping and repeatedly allowing the light background to shine through in transparent and semi-transparent sections.
In the finished work, the dynamic determining the painting process became a perfect expression of meditative tranquillity. The work offered here is characterised by the greatest possible contrast between the deepest black and the lightest unpainted areas, creating a balanced interplay of drama and ease.