Pierre Soulages died in October 2022, at 102. He was known as “the painter of black.” As Soulages once said of a solar eclipse, “The masked sun was the black of before the light, before colors, that which I love for its gravity, its radicalness. It was like the origin of the world, our origins too, before being born.” Soulages started experimenting with black after W.W. II, while studying at the Fine Arts School of Montpelier. It was around then that he discovered the Musée Fabre and spent many hours examining its collection. “More than any other,” he wrote, “this museum meant a lot to me.” In the first of many events celebrating the bicentennial of the Musée Fabre, this exhibition pays tribute to this monumental Soulages. —Elena Clavarino