The French painter and printmaker Pierre Soulages, figure of the informal painting, carried out an important research work on the light and darkness of the dark, which led him to develop an innovative pictorial language, qualified as “black-light” or “outrenoir”.

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In 1939, when he was admitted to the Beaux-Arts in Paris, Soulages refused the conformism and academicism of education. He preferred to go to the Louvre and visit the exhibitions of his contemporaries, from Paul Cézanne to Pablo Picasso. His predominantly dark canvases break with the figurative and colorful painting of the post-war period. In the 1950s, his works entered institutions such as the Philipps Gallery (Washington), the Guggenheim and MoMA (New York), the Tate Gallery (London) or the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris.

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In 1986, its consecration was marked by the public commission of stained glass windows for the Sainte-Foy Abbey in Conques. In 2019, the Louvre Museum honors the entire work of Pierre Soulages, tribute rarely awarded to painters during their lifetime, with the exception of Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall. The death of Soulages in 2022, at the age of 102, marked a turning point in the artist's reputation on the art market.