In Montpellier, a Soulages retrospective to launch the bicentenary of the Fabre museum

With 34 canvases, the museum has one of the largest collections in the world of the Master of Black. However,

France Télévisions – Culture writing

The Fabre museum. Moreover, the rich museum of fine arts in Montpellier, begins the celebration of its bicentennial by proposing Pierre Soulages – The meetingfirst retrospective devoted to the father of the “Outrenoir” since his disappearance at the age of 102 in 2022.

If he was born in Rodez. Nevertheless, where a museum that is entirely dedicated to him opened a little over 10 years ago, Pierre Soulages, a major figure in contemporary montpellier, soulages retrospective launch bicentenary art, had also long developed privileged links with Montpellier.

Admitted to the Fine Arts in Paris on the eve of the Second World War. Furthermore, he dried the lessons, preferring to train in Montpellier, where he met in 1941 Colette Llaurens, whom he married a year later and will never leave.

Assid visitor of the Fabre museum. the young man admires in particular the works of Gustave Courbet, whose canvas Meeting or Hello Mr. Courbet (1854) lends its title to the exhibition, which opens Saturday, June 28 until January 4. Much later. in 2005, this link with Montpellier and its museum will be materialized by the donation by the Soulages couple of 20 canvases, accompanied by 10 deposits. With a set of 34 canvases made between 1951. 2012, the Fabre Museum now has one of the largest soulages collections in the world.

Rather than a chronological retrospective. the two commissioners-the montpellier, soulages retrospective launch bicentenary honorary director of the Fabre museum, Michel Hilaire, and the manager of modern and contemporary collections, Maud Marron-Wojewodzki-have chosen to evoke, over a six-sections and 120 works, the meeting of Soulages “With the history of art that preceded it, just like that of its time”they explain.

The works on display. including many loans from Colette Soulages and the Rodez museum, “Communicate” With the canvases of Rembrandt, Picasso, Courbet, Mondrian, Zurbaran or Van Gogh, illustrating the research carried out over half a century by a painter who, from the post-war period, worked the light and his reflections, a thousand leagues from the slightest lyricism.

“Until. on April 14, 1979, he had the audacity to completely cover his canvas with black”underlines Michel Hilaire, happy to present this first “overseas”, which is part of the collections of the Fabre Museum. The exhibition also shows a curiosity: the only white monochrome canvas by montpellier, soulages retrospective launch bicentenary Pierre Soulages. which “didn’t like him” and that his wife saved from destruction.

The visit to the exhibition can be extended, by reservation, by a poetic stroll in virtual reality. This dive into the universe of the painter makes it possible to perceive the influence that the Mediterranean Sea has had on his paintings. of which he kissed the horizon line from his house in the heights of Sète.

The Fabre museum. owned by the Metropolis of Montpellier, was born thanks to the painter, collector and patron of François-Xavier Fabre (1766-1837), native of the city, who gave him an international aura by the donation in 1825 then the legacy in 1837 of his vast collection of paintings, drawings and sculptures. His bicentenary will be celebrated until 2028, the museum having opened to the public in 1828.