Pierre Soulages

Haim Chanin Fine Arts proudly presents the first United States solo exhibition by French master Pierre Soulages in over thirty years. The exhibition, on view from May 4 through June 25, 2005, features sixteen works on paper mounted on canvas in walnut stain and gouache.

Pierre Soulages is undoubtedly France's leading abstract painter. Born in Rodez in 1919, Soulages work is characterized by the use of somber colors, predominantly black, applied with wide controlled brushstrokes. In the walnut stain pieces presented at Haim Chanin Fine Arts, Soulages explores the tonal possibilities of the medium, ranging from luminescent light brown to quasi-black. The entire surface is activated in these perfectly balanced compositions made from broad lines of browns and whites.

Soulages moved to Paris in the 40s and quickly attained international prominence because of his unique and independent style. His work is characterized by broad, frontal strokes, first seen in the Ideographic paintings of the 40s, by the use of black to transmute light, as in the Outrenoir works, and by the adoption of non-traditional art materials, such as walnut stain and house-painter's brushes. Soulages applies paint with carefully controlled, yet grand and uninhibited, gestures. Like a scientist, he investigates the materiality of paint and the changing light reflected off the surface.

Since his first retrospective exhibition in Hanover, Germany in 1960, Soulages' oeuvre has been exhibited internationally without interruption, including retrospectives at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico; Kunstmuseum, Berne; Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo; Museum Fridericianum, Kassel; IVAM-Centro Julio González, Valencia; MNAM-Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Musée d'Art Contemporain, Montréal; and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul. In 2001, he became the first contemporary artist to be exhibited at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Today his works are part of over a hundred museum collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo; the Fogg Art Gallery, Harvard University; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Tate Gallery, London; the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; and the Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro.

After exhibiting at the Kootz Gallery in New York from 1954 to 1966, the concurrent exhibitions at Haim Chanin Fine Arts and Robert Miller Gallery mark Soulages' first significant exhibitions in the United States in over thirty years.

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Pierre Soulages