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Lot Essay
This is infinitely more ambitious painting and its pulsation aspires to be the pulsation of the world. The great rhythms of his paintings are in effect abstractions of the great rhythms of Nature, the recordings of the cardiogram of Great Pan himself’ (M. Ragon, 1960, quoted in P. Encrevé & A. Pacquement (eds.), Soulages, exh. cat., Paris, 2009, p. 311).
Bold and monumental, Pierre Soulages’ Peinture 128 x 88cm., 12 février 1960 is a striking example of the artist’s use of a multitude of blacks, the traces of his spatula revealing a sublime transparent surface from the most opaque black. Indeed this work was created at a pivotal movement in his artistic production, when Soulages sought to imbue his paintings with a new luminosity. Pushing the material boundaries of paint, Soulages began evolving his practice in a new direction between the years 1957-1963, and in 1960 he abandoned commercial-format canvases in favour of customised frames, of which the current work is an example. Scraping back his compositions to expose the shadowy imprint left by his signature black paint, Soulages allowed light to emanate from the canvas itself. By contrast, the thick impastoed swatches of viscous black paint are made more pronounced, bestowing a sculptural quality to the paint. ‘Black, I’ve always loved. [...] It has always been the foundation of my palette. It is the absence of colour the most intense, the most violent, which gives an intense and violent presence in the colours, even white, as a tree makes the sky blue’ (P. Soulages, quoted in P. Schneider, ‘The Louvre Soulages’, in Evidence, no. 143, June 1963, pp. 46-53). Acquired from the prestigious Kootz gallery the year after it was painted, the present work has remained in the Blum Collection since 1961.
The present work is shaped by the unique circumstances of its creation and was created at an important moment in the artist’s career: both on a personal level and in terms of critical response in which Soulages first curated an exhibition of his own work at Galerie de France, as well as the time of the first international retrospective of Soulages’ work which opened in December at the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover. It was also at this time that the artist built a new studio attached to his house in Sète. In addition to his Paris studio, this larger space, with its lofty 4 meters high ceilings lit by large bay windows, was designed by Soulages as a suitable setting to accompany the development of his work.
To achieve the desired effect, Soulages often placed his canvases on the ground and working above them, applying paint with a spatula while the coat below was still fresh. Wielding the palette knife like a bricklaying trowel, the artist systematically built up paint on either side of his knife before pushing off thick, pliable globs onto the canvas. Building his composition, the surface texture of the lustrous black paint is created by the artist working instinctively and responsively to the fluid, malleable qualities of his medium. In a single gesture, the painter deposited and partially scraped the paint, achieving what Pierre Encrevé describes as ‘what [the artist] particularly wanted then: that the material, the colour and the form would be inseparable – because they happen at the same time, one never being chosen before the other’ (P. Encrevé, Soulages, Les Peintures 1946-2006, Seuil, Paris 1994).
Bold and monumental, Pierre Soulages’ Peinture 128 x 88cm., 12 février 1960 is a striking example of the artist’s use of a multitude of blacks, the traces of his spatula revealing a sublime transparent surface from the most opaque black. Indeed this work was created at a pivotal movement in his artistic production, when Soulages sought to imbue his paintings with a new luminosity. Pushing the material boundaries of paint, Soulages began evolving his practice in a new direction between the years 1957-1963, and in 1960 he abandoned commercial-format canvases in favour of customised frames, of which the current work is an example. Scraping back his compositions to expose the shadowy imprint left by his signature black paint, Soulages allowed light to emanate from the canvas itself. By contrast, the thick impastoed swatches of viscous black paint are made more pronounced, bestowing a sculptural quality to the paint. ‘Black, I’ve always loved. [...] It has always been the foundation of my palette. It is the absence of colour the most intense, the most violent, which gives an intense and violent presence in the colours, even white, as a tree makes the sky blue’ (P. Soulages, quoted in P. Schneider, ‘The Louvre Soulages’, in Evidence, no. 143, June 1963, pp. 46-53). Acquired from the prestigious Kootz gallery the year after it was painted, the present work has remained in the Blum Collection since 1961.
The present work is shaped by the unique circumstances of its creation and was created at an important moment in the artist’s career: both on a personal level and in terms of critical response in which Soulages first curated an exhibition of his own work at Galerie de France, as well as the time of the first international retrospective of Soulages’ work which opened in December at the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover. It was also at this time that the artist built a new studio attached to his house in Sète. In addition to his Paris studio, this larger space, with its lofty 4 meters high ceilings lit by large bay windows, was designed by Soulages as a suitable setting to accompany the development of his work.
To achieve the desired effect, Soulages often placed his canvases on the ground and working above them, applying paint with a spatula while the coat below was still fresh. Wielding the palette knife like a bricklaying trowel, the artist systematically built up paint on either side of his knife before pushing off thick, pliable globs onto the canvas. Building his composition, the surface texture of the lustrous black paint is created by the artist working instinctively and responsively to the fluid, malleable qualities of his medium. In a single gesture, the painter deposited and partially scraped the paint, achieving what Pierre Encrevé describes as ‘what [the artist] particularly wanted then: that the material, the colour and the form would be inseparable – because they happen at the same time, one never being chosen before the other’ (P. Encrevé, Soulages, Les Peintures 1946-2006, Seuil, Paris 1994).