« A painting should not be the site of a narrative, but of an experience. " said Pierre Soulages. And it is precisely this experience that the Fabre Museum invites us to live since June 28, giving us the opportunity to come and discover or rediscover the strength and singularity of this extraordinary artist. 

The birth of an artist

French painter and engraver Pierre Soulages is one of the greatest artists of his generation. Born in Rodez in 1919, he left his mark on contemporary art through his constant creative exploration, poised between a rejection of conformity and the audacity of experimentation. Famous for revealing the reflections of light through black, his works have been exhibited across the globe, from Senegal to China, including Brazil, the United States, and Indonesia. In 2019, this pioneer was still the subject of a solo exhibition at the Louvre Museum, an exceptional honor for a living artist. Having passed away in 2022 at the age of 102, Pierre Soulages leaves behind a major artistic legacy, which the Fabre Museum intends to showcase in a special exhibition aptly titled "Pierre Soulages: The Encounter." A nod to one of Gustave Courbet's iconic paintings in the Musée Fabre, this title subtly reflects the artist's encounter with the history of art that preceded him, as well as with that of his own time, throughout the exhibition. An immersive journey into the heart of contemporary creation!

Pierre Soulages and the Musée Fabre: close ties

« More than any other, this museum meant a great deal to me. “,” wrote Pierre Soulages at the end of his life. It must be said that the story between the artist and the Fabre Museum began eighty years earlier, during the Second World War, when he was preparing for a teaching position in drawing at the Montpellier School of Fine Arts. A faithful visitor to the institution throughout his life, Pierre Soulages nurtured the desire to contribute to making this museum a gateway to art, accessible to all. In 2005, he donated 20 works to the city of Montpellier and placed 10 canvases on loan. This exceptional donation is what the Fabre Museum intends to showcase through its tribute to the master. Conceived as a retrospective, this exhibition unfolds across nearly 1,200 square meters in a cyclical approach, respecting the original spirit of the presentation that the artist had envisioned in the galleries permanently dedicated to him. In total, no fewer than 120 canvases, works on paper, copper, bronze, and glass pieces from major European public and private collections are presented alongside a selection of paintings by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Mondrian, Picasso, Pierrette Bloch, and Zao Wou-Ki. These encounters—artistic, formal, theoretical, and personal—between Soulages and art history serve as a masterful celebration of the Fabre Museum's bicentenary.  

The entire Soulages universe in six chapters 

Through a journey in six chapters, the exhibition seeks to highlight the different moments in the life and career of Pierre Soulages. 

Immersed in parietal art and its decorated caves, the first section reveals the omnipresence of the world of origins in the artist's approach. Within the context of a tabula rasa inherent to the post-war period, Pierre Soulages began at this time to work with walnut stains, tars, or rusted iron to develop a pictorial material with a mineral and telluric appearance.

The second chapter, entitled "Building the Painting," explores the artist's three-dimensional approach in his paintings of the 1950s. Rejecting all lyricism and gestural expression, Pierre Soulages conceived of the space occupied by his canvases as an architecture and developed his own painting tools. In his hands, brushes and scrapers created different layers on his works, revealing the full depths of the material. 

The visitor will then be invited to discover the artist's so-called "Cistercian" period, showcasing a collection of canvases from the 1970s, described as "macrographies" by critic Harold Rosenberg. But also some Outrenoirs Recent works, drawing inspiration from Chinese calligraphy, feature large, illegible scripts that reflect Pierre Soulages' desire for a kind of artistic silence. An intention bordering on the ineffable, defying words…

The fourth section explores Pierre Soulages' fascination with black and light. The culmination of his research on how to make light emerge from black, the Outrenoirs occupy the entire second half of the painter's career. In his single-pigment works covered entirely with black paint, the artist achieves the feat of offering the viewer, as time and movement in space change, the spectacle of intense light contrast effects that seem to emerge from the depths of the canvas. 

As the opposite of black, white also plays an important role in Soulages' work. The fifth part is devoted to the direct and radical confrontation between these two colors. Already present as highlights or as a background in paintings, from 1999 onwards, white reappears in the Outrenoirs, taking the form of frail lines, similar to tears, or incisive cut paper, creating breaks on the surface.

The sixth and final chapter of the exhibition is dedicated to the perception of space in Soulages's painting, both within the canvases themselves and in their dialogue with the surrounding space. Thus, some of his monumental works, the polyptychs, are presented in the center of the space and suspended by cables, according to a system devised by Soulages in 1966 for a retrospective in Houston. The aim? To create a genuine physical and tactile interaction between the visitor and the painting. 

Ultimately, “Pierre Soulages. The Encounter” is much more than an exhibition: it is a multi-sensory adventure that offers us a gateway into contemporary art through the eyes of a free artist who has never stopped creating… 

“Pierre Soulages. The Encounter”
Fabre Museum
39, boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, Montpellier
From June 28, 2025 to January 4, 2026

museefabre.fr