The Musée Soulages has opened. Rodez honors the painter of black and light.

Today the museum dedicated to Pierre Soulages opens in Rodez, the artist’s birthplace. “The greatest living French painter” as he’s been defined in France and abroad. The great master of abstractionism. He has been internationally recognized since the 1940s and linked to figures like Mark Rothko and Lucio Fontana for his meticulous, monumental works (some of which are four meters in height). Even today at age 95, Soulages continues to do profound research into every possibility of his abstractionism with a monochromatic base, which is in fact millimetrically polychrome if you consider the subtle, almost lenticular variations of the black shades that characterize his art.

The title of a series of his works – Outrenoir – is poetic enough to summarize his entire career: black that is lyrical, black as the antitheses of darkness, black as a means to show and organize light.

The museum, realized by the Spanish group RCR (Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vitalta) can’t help but reflect the poetry of the artist.

The numerous techniques he has used are evoked in the appearance of the building. Various monolithic cubes rise from a base, and inside, this creates different types of spaces that are used according to the works on display: paintings on canvas or paper, etchings, lithographs, serigraphy, bronzes or paintings under glass.

Even light, a theme that is dear to the master, is changeable. In respecting each of the techniques utilized, the light – be it natural or artificial – creates a path that alternates moments of almost semi-darkness to show the fragile works on paper created with the “walnut stain” technique to areas with brighter lighting to display the Outrenoirs or the naturally sized stained glass windows from the abbey of Sainte-Foy de Conques.

Even the materials used for the museum are the result of a careful selection process that the architects carried out along with Soulages. The cladding of the building is in rough Corten steel, which allows it to blend in with the surrounding landscape. The dark red color seems to be taken from the same warm palette of the pink sandstone of the nearby cathedral, and at the same time, it brings to mind the walnut technique Soulages has used so much.

The exhibition design by Philippe Maffre is a Goppion installation. The company engineered and realized the moulding in metal along with 45 display cases (table and wall models) in steel and glass.

One great challenge was presented by the creation of a large, suspended table display case (6 meters by 1 meter) with 5 modules that can be opened. The construction of that piece required complex studies on structural rigidity in order to guarantee a high level of airtightness.