Pierre Jean Louis Germain Soulages (1919-2022) was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor. Working primarily with painting and sculpture, Pierre Soulages was recognised for his experimental applications of black paint in a pursuit of producing light in darkness. As a young man Soulages was aware of the works of Pablo Picasso and Paul Cézanne, who inspired him to train as a painter at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris Soulages served briefly in the military during World War II, after which he moved to Montpellier. There, he met Russian illustrator and designer Sonia Delaunay, who introduced him to abstract art. He produced his first abstract painting in 1946, shifting from naturalistic landscapes to the calligraphic abstractions that would come to define his practice.
