Pierre Soulages is undoubtedly one of France's best-known and most internationally acclaimed contemporary artists. Despite his recent death, he is still making a name for himself and his paintings inevitably provoke passion amongst collectors.

As a teenager, he began his long career, with repetitive paintings of snowy landscapes, already fascinated by light and its reflections. Between 1938 and 1940, after graduating from high school, he discovered the fine arts and the great masters in Paris, before being drafted until 1944. It was an eventful period for the artist, rich in encounters, but above all it was a time when he painted very little. It wasn't until 1945 that he began to produce the kind of work we know today, the brous de noix, his brownish, earthy works on paper. During this period, and well into the 1950s, he produced very few oil paintings, confining himself to very small formats and works on paper.

The year 1949 was a pivotal period for the artist, corresponding to the moment when he achieved a certain form of recognition through his first exhibitions in New York. Pierre Soulages was still a young painter, gradually discovering himself through his work. Slowly but surely, his works gained in nuance and depth, until they reached that famous black beyond black, known as "outrenoir".

This artwork, painted during this extraordinarily significant period for the artist, is a rarity on the market. Both in terms of its production date and its technique and colours, it represents a transitional moment, a time when the French artist's genius was first manifesting itself in its most striking form. Bearing both the hallmarks of his early experiments, and of the qualities that would make him the painter of black and light, this elegant oil on cardboard reveals itself in all its complexity through the light variations and reflections on its pictorial layer. The thick black seems to absorb light and reflect it in a diffuse and heterogeneous way. It is a raw scar across the composition, zigzagging through the subtle colours, revealing the artist's complex technical skills.

Pierre Soulages, who died in 2022, has since proved that the excellence of his legacy will live on. We have already had the exceptional good fortune of being behind the first sale of a painting by the artist after his death, an event that was significant in many ways. It is therefore with great enthusiasm that we are offering this exceptional work for sale this November, with the certainty that it will find its public as well as in the past.

Pierre Soulages, Peinture 10,6 x 8 cm, 1949
Oil on cardboard mounted on canvas
4 11/64 x 3 5/32 in.
A certificate of authenticity signed by the artist, dated 1 July 2009, will be given to the buyer.

Provenance: M. et Mme Guy Marester, Paris Galerie Berès, Paris Collection privée, Auvergne
Bibliography: Encreve Pierre ; Soulages, L'oeuvre complet, Peintures, I. 1946 - 1959 ; Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1994 ; work listed and reproduced under number 37a on page 102



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