The Luxembourg Museum is currently presenting "Soulages, Another Light," an exhibition featuring a selection of lesser-known early works by Pierre Soulages created on paper starting in 1940. These remarkable pieces, executed with walnut stain and Chinese ink on paper, offer visitors a glimpse into the formative years of the artist who would later become renowned as the master of black.
The exhibition showcases a splendid interplay of contrasts that foreshadows Soulages' future canvas works. These early paper pieces demonstrate the artist's innovative approach to materials and his lifelong fascination with dark, luminous surfaces. The walnut stain technique, in particular, reveals Soulages' unconventional methods and his ability to transform humble materials into profound artistic statements.
Pierre Soulages, the renowned artist from Aveyron, was known for borrowing tools from house painters throughout his career. He regularly used wide brushes, metal blades, scrapers, and spatulas that matched the amplitude of his gestures and supported his artistic research. However, the painter also drew inspiration from cabinetmakers' workshops, where he discovered walnut stain, a vegetable pigment traditionally used for coloring furniture.
From his earliest works in 1948, Soulages was irresistibly drawn to dark tones and experimented with the warm, somber tonalities of this thick paste, which he would heat and dilute at will. Visitors to the exhibition can fully appreciate the range of his variations in bistre, brown, and charcoal tones as they explore the series of 135 paintings on paper that have been assembled for this comprehensive show.
The exhibition provides crucial insight into Soulages' artistic development and demonstrates how his early experimentation with unconventional materials and techniques laid the foundation for his later monumental black paintings. These paper works reveal the genesis of his unique visual language and his innovative approach to light and shadow that would define his entire artistic career.
