In 2025, the Musée Fabre in Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole will begin celebrating its bicentenary with a major exhibition dedicated to Pierre Soulages. In 1941, in the midst of World War II, the artist discovered the Musée Fabre and its collections while preparing to teach drawing at the Montpellier School of Fine Arts.
The significance of this encounter— “more than any other, this museum meant a lot to me,” the painter wrote—was realized in 2005 with the exceptional donation of twenty works to the city of Montpellier, and the deposit of ten paintings. Twenty years later, the Musée Fabre is paying tribute to this immense French artist, who died in 2022, with a major exhibition designed as a retrospective; the first of this scale in Montpellier, a city with which Soulages had forged strong and emotional ties.
“Pierre Soulages. The Encounter” is spread over three levels and over 1,200 m², creating a continuity between the exhibition rooms and the museum’s permanent Soulages rooms. The exhibition brings together approximately 120 canvases, works on paper, copper, bronze, and glass, and showcases Soulages’ artistic, formal, theoretical, and friendly encounters with art history and the art of his time.
Along the way, in dedicated spaces, the visitor discovers a selection of paintings by great names in the history of art that preceded him – such as Rembrandt, Zurbarán , Courbet, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Mondrian, Picasso -, as well as significant encounters that punctuated the artist’s life – such as Hans Hartung, Anna-Eva Bergman, Pierrette Bloch and Zao Wou-Ki.
© Text and Photo Courtesy of Musée Fabre
