Pierre SOULAGES (1919-2022) - Lot 33

Pierre SOULAGES (1919-2022) Walnut stain and gouache on paper, 1973 Signed lower right. 65 x 50 cm Certificate from Madame Colette Soulages dated September 26, 2025. Provenance : Received as a gift from the artist by Professor Jean Hamburger. Collection of Professor Jean Hamburger, Then by descent. Around 1946, Pierre Soulages began working with walnut stain, which enabled him to make the most of a material that was unique to the craftsman. His first attempts reveal his highly personal conception of abstraction. The painter chose this medium for its qualities of transparency and luminosity. This natural ink, made from the decoction of walnut gangues, is used by woodworkers to stain wood. Treated as a wash, the brou provides Soulages with a wide range of warm and dark shades, enabling him to create opacity and transparency using painters' tools. Soulages illuminates the paper with broad, black and brown solids; the strokes are broad and assertive, revealing hieratic signs that progressively occupy the space of the sheet. space on the sheet. Soulages regularly employed this medium in his research into the infinite plurality of light, which culminated in the Outrenoir period of the late 1970s. Pierre and Colette Soulages' donation to the Musée de Rodez brings together nearly 100 paintings on paper, including the precious brous de noix.