PIERRE SOULAGES’ RETROSPECTIVE AT MUSEE SOULAGES RODEZ
May 31, 2014 – October 5, 2014
PIERRE SOULAGES’
RETROSPECTIVE AT MUSEE SOULAGES RODEZ
May
31, 2014 – October 5, 2014
Curators: Benoît
Decron, head of heritage conservation, and Pierre Encrevé, Pierre Soulages’
biographer.
The new Soulages
Museum opened on 31th May 2014 in Rodez, the home town of the artist Pierre
Soulages. The museum will house the extraordinary donations made by Pierre and
Colette Soulages to the Greater Rodez Urban Community.
This gift of more
than 500 works and documents is the most significant collection ever donated by
an artist during his lifetime.
This retrospective
will be the first exhibition ever organised in Europe on Soulages’ Outrenoirs.
The exhibition
boasts around 30 large-scale Outrenoirs, lent by major museums and foundations
in Europe. Pierre Soulages personally participated in the choice of the
artworks, to make up a representative range that will complement the museum’s
permanent collection, highlighting the first three decades of his work.
This exhibition has
been labelled: “Exhibition of National Interest” by the Ministry of Culture and
Communication.
From 2001, Pierre
Soulages was certain that the core of the future museum would be all his works
on the stained glass windows he created for the abbey of Conques, both in the
concept of the museum and the choice of its architecture. The collection
includes his preparatory works for the windows, figurative paintings and
walnut-stain works from his youth, as well as his complete printed works.
The museum intends
to become a reference point for international modern and contemporary art. To
mark the opening, it will stage an exhibition, ‘Pierre Soulages:
The Outrenoir(s) [Ultra-Blacks] in European
collections’. Beyond its monographic dimension, it intends to become a place
where one will discover the techniques
and mainsprings of
artistic creation: the stained-glass windows he made for Conques Abbey will be
the showpiece of the museum.
The Soulages Museum
is a museum ''in motion''; it has a vast temporary exhibition room and is
designed to host events of both national and international scale.
You may visit to
read Pierre Soulages interview and to see his different paintings and
information of Musee Soulages’
architectural project to click below links.
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/08/musee-soulages-design-by-rcr.html
'' PEINTURE 202 x 159 cm - 19 OCTOBRE 2013
Acrylic on Canvas
Acrylic on Canvas
Soulages Archives, 2014
Photo © Vincent Cunillere
PEINTURE 146 x 97 cm, 3 JUIN 1957 ( DETAIL )
Oil on Canvas
Oil on Canvas
PEINTURE 146 x 97 cm,
3 JUIN 1957
Oil on Canvas
Oil on Canvas
PEINTURE 146 x 97 cm, 3 JUIN 1957 ( DETAIL )
Oil on Canvas
Oil on Canvas
PEINTURE 202 x 143 cm – 3 MARS 2013
Acrylic on Canvas
Soulages Archives,
2014
Pierre Soulages Dans Son Atelier 1968 © Fritz Pitz 1928-2006
AN ‘’ UNUSUAL ‘’ MUSEUM
Neither a mausoleum nor a monographic chore, the Soulages Museum
will be a place for meetings and new experiences. While being a genuine modern
and contemporary art museum, it will favour exchanges with similar institutions
or foundations, with great freedom in its choices from promising to seasoned
artists, through different
themes and links from one historical era to another (the Middle
Ages, for instance, whom Soulages holds dear). The museum fits into the
European gathering of museums.
The Soulages Museum will be ‘' unusual ‘ according to the painter's
words,:
'' It will highligt the process of artistic creation, the role of
the unexpected that lies in it, and without using banal teaching methods, I
hope it will open the eyes of the public and awake their spirit to understand
what art stands for. '' Visitor services will particularly strive to explain
the meaning of the artist's know-how and gestures. The audience will explore
Pierre Soulages' works in the museum by following an itinerary that combines the
painter's history– his biography–with other expressions of his creativity, such
as oil paintings, paintings on paper, printed works or stained-glass windows.
The bright rooms with high ceilings will alternate with the
darkened rooms with low ceilings to tackle specific topics, including the very
first figurative works Soulages made in Rodez, the inspiration he found in the
Aveyron, the hanging of artworks, the Walnut Stains, the different techniques
of engraving, or the works he did at Conques.
Each aspect of the donation will be associated with its constituent
technique. That is why Conques stained-glass windows are a link between
monumental medieval heritage and contemporary creation, and act as a catharsis:
they are the accurate portrait of the artist. In Conques abbey, Soulages
thought of a new light. In Rodez, we must show clearly how we can approach that
form of light thanks to experimental witnesses. From matter to thought, with
tools and hands.
Benoît Decron,
Chief Curator
Director of the
Greater Rodez museums
http://musee-soulages.grand-rodez.com/museum-soulages/
PEINTURE 202x263cm – 30 NOVEMBRE, 1967
PEINTURE 130 x 162 cm - 21 JUILLET 1958
Oil on Canvas, 130 x
162 cm
© 2011, ProLitteris,
Zurich. Photo : Sandra Pointet
© Fondation Gandur
pour l’Art, Genève.
PEINTURE 130.2 x
162.5 cm - 27 juillet 1956
Oil on canvas
Collection of the
Montreal Museum of
Fine Arts, Montreal
PEINTURE
162 x
114 cm - 28 DECEMBRE 1959
Oil on Canvas
Oil on Canvas
BROU DE NOIX - 1948
Papier marouflé sur toile - 65 x 50 cm,
Donation Pierre et Colette Soulages
Musée Soulages – Rodez
LITHOGRAPH No: 22, 1969
Lithograph
30 1/2 × 21 1/4 inches -
77.5 × 54 cm
Edition AP/85
UNTITLED - 1957
Etching and aquatint
plate: 21 5/8 x 15
1/4" (55 x 38.8 cm); sheet: 26 x 19 3/4" (66 x 50.1 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of
Mr. and Mrs. Armand P. Bartos
© 2014 Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Vitrail de Pierre
Soulages pour l’abbatiale de
Conques © Droits
réservé
PEINTURE 181 x 162 cm - 26 JANVIER 2014
Acrylic on Canvas
Soulages Archives, 2014
Photo: © Vincent Cunillère
‘’ AN OPEN
MUSEUM ‘’
Eight years after
Pierre and Colette Soulages' first donation to the Greater Rodez Authority and
three and a half years after the laying of the foundation stone, the Soulages
Museum will open its doors on May 23th, 2014. The museum is housing the world's
largest collection dedicated to the Outrenoir's master. The museum will
resemble Pierre Soulages: open to creation in all its forms, and above all open
to other artists in order to bring art and culture within the reach of everyone
from near and far and to arouse their curiosity.
He said he had
suffered from not finding easily a way to nurture his vocation during his
childhood in Rodez. Today he is offering his hometown the most wonderful of
opportunities. A great opportunity for everyone, whether they be insiders or
just curious onlookers, to come and have a look, to learn and love art and
culture. A wide open museum both accessible and alive. In a nutshell, the
museum will be the antithesis of a dialogue among peers.
And yet it is in
that very territory that Pierre Soulages' vocation awoke in him. In his words:
'' This is where my taste was shaped. '' At the Fenaille Museum, in front of
these statues-menhirs that had survived the passage of 5,000 years. In front of
the wide open spaces of the Aubrac or the limestone plateaus of Causses. At
Conques, in front of the Romanesque architectural masterpiece of the
abbey-church of Sainte-Foy whose stained-glass windows were designed by Pierre
Soulages between 1986 and 1994. The museum does not intend to become a mausoleum.
Pierre Soulages rejects this idea of a single-artist museum that would be like
a monograph. He agreed only if the museum would be open to other creations and
emphasized the key-role of the 500 square meter temporary exhibitions' room. He
also hoped that this space would serve an educational purpose and establish a
link between manufacturing process and artistic goals, between tools and works.
A unique concept.
The artist and the
councillors wanted the same thing: a museum that would be open to the daily
life of Rodez, a town that has just gone through a deep architectural change
that stands as a link between the historic center and Bourran modern
neighbourhood. The museum will be part not only of that gathering of culture,
leisure, sports and educational facilities: movie theatres, municipal halls,
gardens and so on... but also near college, Foch highschool, the Amphitheatre
and the watersports
centre. This
redesigned space will become a new living environment for everyone, locals and
visitors, and a lively place where people can meet and share experiences.
The Soulages Museum
has been financed by the Greater Rodez Authority (€21,4m net of tax) and the
State (€4m), the Midi-Pyrénées Region (€4m) and the Aveyron general council and
Rodez town. The museum will also have a wonderful opportunity to show the world
most of Rodez handmade masterpieces–an amazing heritage that allowed Rodez town
to join the very selective club of ''Art and History Provinces’'
territories–and also an ''art de vivre’' cultivated with passion and pleasure.
Eventually, the museum will be a proud representative of a region that
establishes
strong links to show
its most precious treasures.
Christian Teyssèdre,
Chairman of the Greater Rodez Authority
http://musee-soulages.grand-rodez.com/museum-soulages/
PEINTURE 222 x
400 cm - 3 MARS 1984
Coll. les Abattoirs,
Toulouse
© ADAGP 2014.
photogr. Auriol-Gineste
PEINTURE 181 x 162 cm - 11 JANVIER 2014
Acrylic on Canvas
Soulages Archives,
2014
Photo: © Vincent
Cunillère
PEINTURE 99 x 159 cm - 11 OCTOBER 2013
Acrylic on Canvas
Soulages Archives, 2014
Photo: © Vincent Cunillère
.jpg)
MUSEE SOULAGES RODEZ
DESIGN BY RCR ARCHITECTS
DESIGN BY RCR ARCHITECTS
MUSEE SOULAGES RODEZ
PEINTURE 100 x
100cm., 14 MARS 1961
Oil on Canvas
Oil on Canvas
PEINTURE 202 x 156 cm - 27 MARS
1961
Oil on Canvas
Oil on Canvas
PEINTURE 97 x 130 cm - 15 AOUT
1961
Oil on Canvas
Oil on Canvas
PEINTURE 130 x 162 cm - 3 AVRIL
1955
Oil on Linen
Oil on Linen
PEINTURE 202x159cm -
5 JUILLET 1966
Oil on Canvas
Donation Pierre et
Colette Soulages
Musée Soulages Rodez
© Vincent Cunillère
PEINTURE 195 x 155 cm - 7
FEVRIER 1957
Oil on Canvas
Oil on Canvas
PEINTURE 157 x 222 cm - 6 AVRIL 2013
Acrylic on Canvas
Soulages Archives,
2014
Photo: © Vincent
Cunillère
PEINTURE 165 x 74 cm - 30 AOUT 2013
Acrylic on Canvas
PEINTURE 202 x 159 cm - 28 OCTOBER 2013
Acrylic and Oil on
Canvas
Soulages Archives,
2014
Photo: © Vincent
Cunillère
PIERRE SOULAGES
Since his first
retrospective exhibition in Hanover, Germany in 1960, Soulages' oeuvre has
been exhibited internationally without interruption, most recently with a
major 2009 retrospective at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris as well as
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; Musée d'Art Contemporain,
Montréal; and the National
Museum of
Contemporary Art, Seoul. In 2001, Soulages became the first contemporary artist
to be exhibited at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
A highlight of
Soulages’ career came in 1986 with a commission from the French Ministry of
Culture to create a cycle of stained glass windows for the Romanesque
Abbey-Church Sainte-Foy in Conques, France. What Soulages achieved at Conques,
over a grueling eight-year period ending in 1994, is nothing less than a total
work of art. With the authorities’ decision to re-conceptualize all the
windows, the church was purged of its World War II memories, for the windows
had been filled by neo-medievalist scenes commissioned in the 1940s under
Marechal Petain’s collaborationist government at Vichy. Soulages’ overall
scheme effectively liberated the church’s astonishing architecture and
transformed it into a site-specific installation. In the glass he developed for
this project, Soulages found the perfect
translucent vehicle
– in essence, a transmogrified twosided painting – that, as a soft and ever
changing grey-white, is equally legible from inside and outside the church. In
the 104 windows he created for Sainte-Foy, Soulages rendered a battery of
straight and softly arcing black lines that engage the architecture and
visitors’ movement through it, as well as the winds and mountains of the
surrounding Aveyron. The Sainte-Foy cycle perfectly illustrates the central concern
with light that has always suffused Soulages’ abstract paintings, and vividly
affirms the strong architectonic urge that had always been present in the
artist’s work.
Today Pierre
Soulages’ paintings 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 Centre Georges Pompidou and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de
Paris; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; and the Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de
Janeiro.
http://www.dominique-levy.com/exhibition/pierre-soulages
