Born on December 24, 1919 in Rodez, Aveyron, is a French painter and engraver associated since the late 1940s with abstract art.
He is particularly known for his use of the reflections of the black color, which he calls "black-light" or "outrenoir". Having made some 1,550 canvases1, the titles of which are mostly composed of the word "painting" followed by the mention of the formatn 1, he is one of the main representatives of the informal painting.

In January 1979, during a work on a painting, Soulages adds and withdraws black for hours. Not knowing what to do, he leaves the workshop, helpless. When he returns two hours later: "The black had invaded everything, so much so that it was as if he no longer existed" 9. This experience marks a turning point in his work. The same year, he exhibited at the National Center of Art and Culture Georges Pompidou his first single-minded paintings, based on the reflection of light on the surface states of black, later called "beyond black".
Soulages chose abstraction, because he says he does not see the interest of passing "by the detour of the representation [...] I do not represent, he says, I present. I do not depict, I paint "5. His pictorial approach is not that of predefined choices but is elaborated in painting being "made" and in the interactions between the painter and his realization during the process of creation, in the relations to forms, proportions, dimensions, colors, etc..10,11
Until 1979, the painting of Soulages is close to the abstract style of Hans Hartung with a restricted palette whose effects of chiaroscuro are perceptible, including in transparency. After 1979, his paintings rely heavily on reliefs, nicks, furrows in dark matter that create both play of light and color. Because it is not the black value itself that is the subject of its work, but the light it reveals and organizes: it is therefore a question of reaching beyond the dark, hence the term of Overseas used to qualify his paintings since the late 1970s; hence also the use of the qualifier "mono-pigmentary" rather than "monochrome" to qualify the painting of Soulages.

Overseas has a variety of effects: use of colors such as brown or blue, mixed with black; use of white in violent contrast with black and white on the entire surface of the canvas; use, after 2004, of acrylic, which allows much more material effects and gives the possibility of contrasts mat / gloss ...