PIERRE SOULAGES (1919 - 2022)

Eau-forte XXXI, 1974 Etching in colors, signed lower right and numbered 37/100 lower left 74.5 x 55.5 cm (à vue) 29 21/64 x 21 27/32 in. (on sight) Pierre Soulages “ I made engraving because, with engraving, something appeared; something which could not appear in painting”. Pierre Soulages was a French painter and printmaker who was born in Rodez in 1919 and who died in Nîmes in 2022. If he is particularly known for his large, deep and vivid canvases, his work involving the etching technique is just as remarkable and may even constitute a more intimate and personal aspect of his career. Encouraged by his colleague and friend Hans Hartung, he discovered the etching technique in the 1950s at the Lacourière studio in Paris. The etchings of Pierre Soulages reveal on paper the quintessence of the acid's bite on the metal, and adopt an almost sculptural aspect. The holes in the copper plate shape and transform these etchings into an abstract form. For Soulages, printing a rectangular shape on rectangular paper is a pleonasm that he sought to banish. The acid creates “fortuitous” forms, which existence are conceived by the artist as an adventure since it is the hazard which guides his hand: “I made engraving because, with engraving, something appeared; something which could not appear in painting”.