
In Tate Modern
In the Studio
Free- Artist
- Pierre Soulages born 1919
- Original title
- Peinture, 23 mai 1953
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 1949 × 1302 mm
frame: 1986 × 1331 × 50 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased 1953
- Reference
- N06199
Display caption
Soulages titled this painting with the date he finished it. He had started using heavy brushstrokes of black paint against a light background in 1947. His style became more energetic and gestural throughout the 1950s. Soulages has said that for him abstraction is a way to explore his imagination and inner experience. 'I work, guided by inner impulse, a longing for certain forms, colours and materials,' he explained in 1950. '[I]t is not until they are on the canvas that they tell me what I want'.
Gallery label, June 2020
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Catalogue entry
Pierre Soulages born 1919
N06199 Peinture, 23 mai 1953 (Painting, 23 May 1953) 1953
Inscribed 'Soulages' b.r. and 'Soulages | 23 mai 53' on back of canvas (the latter inscription is repeated on the stretcher, together with the artist's address in the rue Schoelcher, Paris)
Oil on canvas, 76 ¾ x 51 ¼ (195 x 130)
Purchased from the artist (Knapping Fund) 1953
Repr:
R.H. Wilenski, The Modern Movement in Art
(London 1957), pl.58; John Rothenstein, The Tate Gallery (London 1966), p.261
The artist wrote as follows about this work on 8 December 1953:
'The painting "23 May 1953" (195cm/130cm) which the Tate Gallery has just bought was finished on 23 May 1953 and had been begun several weeks earlier.
'This painting belongs to a series of works on a common theme. The first in date is a painting in turpentine on paper of 1951; followed by a small canvas "15 December 1951" (46cm/38cm) acquired by the Galerie Louis Carré, Paris; then taken up again in 53: "16 May 1953" (46cm/33cm), collection P. Bloch, Paris.
'These works were not done as a conscious series of studies for the large painting you own, but are variations which nevertheless prepare the way for the painting "23 May 1953".
'I choose to designate my paintings by the date of their completion; this is no more than a practical means of placing them in time and giving them a name.'
For a later variant of the same theme, see 'Painting, 16 June 1953' (canvas, 41 x 33cm) reproduced in colour in James Johnson Sweeney, Soulages
(London 1972), pl.26.
Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.699, reproduced p.699
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