Working exclusively with black paint, he made large abstract paintings that gleamed in the light and brought him international renown.
, explaining how he liked to dip his paintbrush in black ink from the age of 6, if not earlier. He had access to other colors, he said, but ignored them altogether, once confusing an older sister who asked what he was drawing with such thick black lines. He replied simply, “Snow.”
A sculptor, draftsman and stained-glass artist in addition to a painter, Mr. Soulages was an elder statesman of abstract art, a literally towering figure who stood more than 6 feet tall and dressed only in black. He was perhaps the only contemporary artist who could claim to be a peer of Willem de Kooning andAlthough he remained better known in Europe than in the United States, Mr.
Mr. Soulages said as much himself. “If painting doesn’t offer a way to dream and create emotions, then it’s not worth it,” he Mr. Soulages received much-needed encouragement from avant-garde painter Francis Picabia and soon caught the attention of American curator James Johnson Sweeney, who helped bring his work to museums in New York. Kootz, the dealer, organized Mr. Soulages’s first American solo show in 1954.