FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2025 
This Week in La Gazette Drouot : A 1956 Soulages bought in New York by architect Walter Netsch
P resented in 1957 at the Kootz Gallery in New York, this work belongs to the period of maturity that Pierre Soulages reached in the mid-1950s. The artist, who had already exhibited regularly in the United States, asserted a painting style structured around matter and gesture, with no concessions to lyricism.
By Vanessa Schmitz-Grucker
Read the full version of "Pierre Soulages: a 1956 painting bought in New York by architect Walter Netsch" in La Gazette Drouot
Produced in the mid-1950s, Peinture 81 x 60 cm, October 27, 1956 marks this inflection point, when Soulages, abandoning all preoccupation with order and composition, explores the very matter of black to make it the principle of his construction. He developed an unapologetic working method based on the balance of mass and the tension of emptiness.
His painting moves away from lyrical resonances towards a rougher structure of equilibrium, in which black is not an absolute but a substance : it catches the light, modulates it, counteracts it. Unlike the monumental canvases that follow, the format chosen here concentrates energy on a restricted plane. The thick, matte paste, hollowed out by the knife blade, reveals in places the weft and ochre breakthroughs that enliven the surface.
Read the full version of "Pierre Soulages: a 1956 painting bought in New York by architect Walter Netsch" in La Gazette Drouot
Produced in the mid-1950s, Peinture 81 x 60 cm, October 27, 1956 marks this inflection point, when Soulages, abandoning all preoccupation with order and composition, explores the very matter of black to make it the principle of his construction. He developed an unapologetic working method based on the balance of mass and the tension of emptiness.
Pierre Soulages (1919-2022),
Peinture 81 x 60 cm, 27 octobre 1956
oil on canvas, 81 x 60 cm.
Estimate : €650,000 / €900,000
© ADAGP, Paris, 2025
Peinture 81 x 60 cm, 27 octobre 1956
oil on canvas, 81 x 60 cm.
Estimate : €650,000 / €900,000
© ADAGP, Paris, 2025
His painting moves away from lyrical resonances towards a rougher structure of equilibrium, in which black is not an absolute but a substance : it catches the light, modulates it, counteracts it. Unlike the monumental canvases that follow, the format chosen here concentrates energy on a restricted plane. The thick, matte paste, hollowed out by the knife blade, reveals in places the weft and ochre breakthroughs that enliven the surface.
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