Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

Soulages’s paintings are characterized by arrangements of bold black or brown brushstrokes against white grounds. Of the color black, he has said: “Black has always been the base of my palette. It [is] the most intense, the most violent absence of color...There is nothing sentimental about my taste for black...It is simply that I see black.“ Soulages’ work, with its heavy impasto and rough, gestural brushstrokes, has affinities with Abstract Expressionism, especially the work of Franz Kline. The intense quality of Soulages’ painting and its monumental weightiness, however, recalls the artist’s fascination with the prehistoric artifacts and Romanesque architecture dotting the landscape of southwest France, where he grew up.