How the ‘Master of Black’ uses non-colour to manipulate light in his artwork

Still active at the age of 97, the French painter and sculptor Pierre Soulages is considered one of the most influential living artists. In this brief portrait, the director Barbara Anastacio is given rare access to Soulages’s studio in Paris, where he discusses his need to paint with non-traditional tools, and how his process is, quite literally, a cycle of creation and destruction, as he burns the paintings that don’t meet his expectations. He also details the principals of his famed ‘Outrenoir’ practice, in which he uses black paint to reflect and create ‘a light that is not obvious’.