Pierre Soulages

Known for: "Outrenoir" black paintings spanning seven decades

Pierre Soulages developed his practice of painting in black — what he called "outrenoir" (beyond black) — across a career spanning more than seven decades, producing paintings in which light reflected from the textured black surface creates an infinite variety of visual experience. He is the oldest artist to have had a retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, which hosted the exhibition in 2009 when he was 90. The Musée Soulages in Rodez, his birthplace, opened in 2014.