Featuring a printed Plexiglas cover, this gorgeous volume celebrates the 100th birthday of “the painter of black”

This fully illustrated volume reproduces works by French painter Pierre Soulages (born 1919) from the 1950s to the present, illustrating his enduring role in the dialogue between European and American painting and inviting viewers to consider an oeuvre that has injected profound poetry into abstraction through its adherence to a single material: black paint.

With a Plexiglas cover in honor of Soulages’ stained-glass windows at the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques, the book is published in both English and Chinese. An essay by Alfred Pacquement, who also cocurated the Louvre’s 2019 Soulages exhibition, reflects on the critical reception of Soulages’ work internationally. An essay by Brooks Adams charts Soulages’ engagement with architecture throughout his career. Poetry by Sy Hoahwah and Virginie Poitrasson responds to Soulages’ life story and his work, while a chronology of the artist’s life includes numerous excerpts from Soulages’ writings appearing here for the first time in English.

Text by: Brooks Adams, Courtney Fiske, Sy Hoahwah, Alfred Pacquement, Virginie Poitrasson, Mary Reilly