Lithographie Soulage

Pierre Soulages was born on December 24, 1919, in Rodez, France. Attracted by Romanesque art and prehistory at a young age, he began to paint. At 18, he was admitted to the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, but, convinced of the mediocrity of the education there, refused to enter. In 1946, Soulages began to paint fulltime. In 1948, he took part in exhibitions in Paris and elsewhere in Europe, including “Französische abstrakte malerei” (French abstract painting) in several German museums. He was the youngest of this group. In 1949, Soulages received a solo exhibition at the Lydia Conti gallery in Paris and group exhibitions in New York, London, Sao Paulo and Copenhagen. From 1949 to 1952, he created his first etchings. His group exhibitions in New York began traveling to other American museums, including “Advancing French Art” (1951), “Younger European Artists” Guggenheim Museum (1953), and “The New Decade,” Museum of Modern Art (1955). He also began to exhibit at the Kootz Gallery, New York, and the Galerie de France, Paris. In the early 1950s, his works were acquired by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London, the National Museum of Modern Art, Paris; and the Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, among others. In 1960, the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover, Germany, held Soulages’ first retrospective. Several retrospectives followed, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (1966). In 1979 Soulages exhibited his first single-pigment paintings based on the reflection of light by the surface states of black at the Musée National d’Art Moderne—Centre Georges Pompidou. The pictorial light arising from the difference between two darknesses in the paintings carried a great power of emotion and possibilities for development. It was later called "black-light" and "outrenoir." Soulages has since created other works where rhythm, space and light are born from the violent contact of black and white on the canvas surface . In 2001, Soulages was the first living artist invited to exhibit at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, then at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. In October 2009, the Centre Pompidou presented the largest retrospective since the beginning of the 1980s devoted to a living artist, occupying more than 2,000 square meters of space. It ranked as the fourth most attended exhibition in the history of the Centre Pompidou. That same year, the Louvre Museum exhibited a painting by Soulages in the Salon Carré in the Denon wing. In 2019, in homage to the artist for his 100th birthday, numerous events were organized in France and abroad. The Soulages exhibition at the Louvre, designed as a mini-retrospective, presented three new paintings and was accompanied by a hanging at the Musée Natinal d’Art Moderne—Centre Georges Pompidou. Today, Soulages is represented in more than 110 museums with more than 230 paintings. He is a favorite painter among his peers, French artists.

Explore a vast range of abstract prints on 1stDibs to find a piece to enhance your existing collection or transform a space.

Unlike figurative paintings and other figurative art, which focuses on realism and representational perspectives, abstract art concentrates on visual interpretation. An artist may use a single color or simple geometric forms to create a world of depth. Printmaking has a rich history of abstraction. Through materials like stone, metal, wood and wax, an image can be transferred from one surface to another.

During the 19th century, iconic artists, including Edvard Munch, Paul Cézanne, Georgiana Houghton and others, began exploring works based on shapes and colors. This was a departure from the academic conventions of European painting and would influence the rise of 20th-century abstraction and its pioneers, like Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian.

Some leaders of European abstraction, including Franz Kline, were influenced by the gestural shapes of East Asian calligraphy. Calligraphy interprets poetry, songs, symbols or other means of storytelling into art, from works on paper in Japan to elements of Islamic architecture.

Bold, daring and expressive, abstract art is constantly evolving and dazzling viewers. And entire genres have blossomed from it, such as Color Field painting and Minimalism.

The collection of abstract art prints on 1stDibs includes etchings, lithographs, screen-prints and other works, and you can find prints by artists such as Joan Miró, Alexander Calder and more.