Pierre Soulages
Peinture 200 x 265 cm, 20 mai 1959 (Painting 200 x 265 cm, 20 May 1959)
May 20, 1959
Pierre Soulages was associated with the French postwar movements "art informel" and "tachisme," two subtly distinct terms coined by two different French critics that nonetheless describe similar forms of abstraction in which effects of spontaneity, including the gestural brushstroke, became a metaphor for the isolated individual searching for meaning in the aftermath of World War II. Made in the late 1950s, Peinture 200 x 265 cm, 20 mai 1959, however, seems to resist such psychological or politicized interpretations. Although abstract, it does not evoke an act of spontaneous free expression, but rather, with its controlled clusters of black and blue strokes applied with a flat, hard-edged tool, it suggests a deliberate and methodical process. As suggested by the title, which simply chronicles the medium, dimensions, and date of the painting’s creation, the painting refers primarily to the closed and systematic terms of its own production, emphasizing its status as an object rather than an expression of a subjective state. For Soulages this overt defiance of symbolic or even subjective meaning may have been a way of carving out a space of intellectual freedom during the Cold War, when cultural propaganda was at a peak. [Exhibition label, 2015]
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Artist
Pierre Soulages
(French, 1919–2022)
- Title Peinture 200 x 265 cm, 20 mai 1959 (Painting 200 x 265 cm, 20 May 1959)
- Date May 20, 1959
- Medium Oil on canvas
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Dimensions
unframed | 78 5/8 x 104 5/16 in.
- Credit line Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard K. Weil, 1961
- Object number WU 3922
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Technique
oil painting
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Work type
painting
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Theme
Abstraction
From Picasso to Fontana: Collecting Modern and Postwar Art in the Eisendrath Years, 1960–1968
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/23/2015 - 04/19/2015
Made in France: Art from 1945 to the Present
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/17/2003 - 04/20/2003
International Abstraction: Art of the 1950s from the Washington University Collections
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/22/1999 - 03/28/1999
Modernism at Midstream: From Europe to America and Back Again
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/04/1983 - 11/06/1983
Washington University Collection of Modern Paintings and Sculpture from Daumier to Pollock
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 04/06/1966 - 05/08/1966
Soulages
New Gallery, Hayden Library, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts), 01/10/1962 - 01/30/1962
A Galaxy of Treasures from St. Louis Collections
Saint Louis Art Museum, 01/18/1961 - 02/13/1961
1961
Mr. and Mrs. Richard K. Weil, St. Louis
Inscription Recto, lower right, in black paint: Soulages
Inscription [on verso at C of stretcher, white rectangular label] [printed in black:] [black horizontal bar at top] / KOOTZ / GALLERY / NEW YORK / [black horizontal bar at bottom]
Inscription [on verso at UR of canvas, written in green paint or pencil:] 20.5- / 1959
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