Pierre Soulages

Pierre Soulages was a French painter, printmaker and sculptor, known as the painter of black. After the Second World War he made abstract paintings of broad black bars on light grounds, and from 1979 he worked on his Outrenoir paintings, surfaces entirely of black whose ridges and grooves catch and reflect the light. He also designed the 104 windows of the abbey church of Sainte-Foy at Conques. A museum devoted to his work opened in his home town of Rodez in 2014, and he died in Nîmes in 2022 at the age of 102.