The Fabre Museum in Montpellier, which houses an important collection of works by Pierre Soulages, will be free this weekend in tribute to the deceased artist. World famous and considered one of the main contemporary painters, he died overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday at the age of 102.
“We wanted to organize a weekend in homage to Pierre Soulages at the heart of the Fabre Museum, who helped shape his outlook and whom he never stopped visiting throughout his life”, underlines Michaël Delafosse, the mayor (PS) of the Hérault prefecture. The museum will be open Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
A collection of 34 paintings
“Montpellier will never forget the invaluable gift that Pierre and Colette Soulages gave it through this donation. [en 2005], which is at the very origin of the renovation of the Fabre museum with its wing devoted to contemporary art”, specifies the city councilor. A condolence book will be available in the museum. Thanks to successive donations from the Soulages couple, the museum has a collection of 34 paintings made between 1951 and 2012 by the master of Outrenoir.
Born in Rodez on December 24, 1919, Pierre Soulages had been admitted to the Beaux-Arts in Paris on the eve of the Second World War, but he had preferred to train in Montpellier. He had met Colette Llaurens there in 1941, whom he married a year later. Established in Sète for more than fifty years, Pierre Soulages died in Nîmes hospital of heart failure.