Pierre Soulages. Black Light

The exhibition is the first retrospective of Pierre Soulages, one of the most prominent exponents of modern French abstract painting, to be held in Russia. The 37 works, while making no claim to provide a comprehensive characterization of the artist’s oeuvre, form a sort of gallery of his output spanning more than 50 years (from 1948 to January 2001) and give visitors an idea of his many-sided and original talent.

The exhibition was organized jointly by the Hermitage and the artist Pierre Soulages, the Department of Culture of the Mairie de Paris, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Association Française d’Action Artistique attached to the French Foreign Ministry and the Paris-Musées with the participation of the Musée de Grenoble, the Musée Fabre (Montpellier), the Musée d’Art Moderne (Saint Etienne), the Espace d’Art Moderne et Contemporain – les Abattoirs de Toulouse and the Galérie Alice Pauli (Lausanne) and the support of the Institut Français in St Petersburg.

A scholarly catalogue entitled Soulages. The Light-Bearing Quality of Black has been prepared for the exhibition. Articles on Soulages’s work have been written by the exhibition organizer, Albert Kostenevich, the chief researcher of the Department of the History of Western European Art, Pierre Encrevé, the author of the catalogue Soulages: l’oeuvre complet, peintures, and Jean-Claude Marcadet, the organizer of the exhibition on behalf of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

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Pierre Soulages and Director of the Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky at the press-conference

First Visitors