Homage to Pierre Soulages, on the occasion of a retrospective of his work at the Pompidou Center (14 October 2009 to 8 March 2010) and of his engravings at the Museum of Modern Art in Strasbourg (31 October 2009 to 3 January 2010).

11 March 1995 is a special date. It is the date the famous artist Pierre Soulages gave his name to the Art School in Charenton.

Sylvie Abelanet remembers:

“The municipality of Charenton asked me to take over the direction of the painting school in 1987. With its success and the large number of students enrolled, it became necessary to consider a new space adapted to the different types of training we wanted to offer to our students. Conscious of the importance of the project, I did not hesitate to contact Pierre Soulages, whose work I admire, to ask him if he would agree to become the school’s ‘godfather’.

“Several elements determined my choice, the first being the different disciplines I wished to develop. Stained glass: had Soulages not recently finished the marvellous windows at Conques? Etching: doesn’t Soulages create extraordinary engravings? Sculpture: hasn’t Soulages also used this medium? And painting… of course.

“Secondly, I appreciated the human qualities of the artist. The sincerity in Pierre Soulages’s work, so distant from the latest fads and fashion, could only come from an honest and rigorous person.
It was this image and this rigor that I wished to infuse into our art school by hiring teachers trained in the fine arts or the applied arts, all working artists and capable educators.

“Pierre Soulages’s work seems at once timeless and contemporary. It brings repose in a world where haste has turned all forms of thought upside-down ... a world where certain types of intelligence even seem to be ignored. His work invites attentive introspection. Pierre Soulages’s strength lies in his fidelity to his quest. A tireless seeker, open and independent, he is also very humane, a reassuring colossus who is attentive to others, a person who possesses Grace.”

Sylvie Abelanet is proud to have founded the Pierre Soulages Art School, which his wife Colette reminds us is the only school to which the famous artist has given his name. As head mistress of this school, Sylvie Abelanet tirelessly defends the values of rigor and honesty in artistic research. Certainly, it is this quality of education that motivates its five hundred students to tirelessly immerse themselves in their work at this school.

Silvie Abélanet with

Colette and Pierre Soulages,

Pierre Encrevé and Pierrette Bloch