The Musée du Luxembourg today unveils Pierre Soulages, Another Light. Paintings on Paper, a landmark Pierre Soulages’ exhibition running from September 17th, 2025, to January 11th, 2026. This long-awaited event shines a spotlight on a rarely explored side of the French master’s career, bringing together 130 works on paper, including more than thirty pieces never before shown to the public.
Rediscovering Pierre Soulages’ works on paper
Unlike his famous oil paintings and “outrenoir” canvases, these Pierre Soulages works reveal the artist’s decades-long fascination with paper as a medium of experimentation. Beginning in the mid-1940s, he created bold walnut stain compositions whose transparency and depth offered a striking contrast to the white surface beneath.
From walnut stains to gouache
Among the highlights are early walnut stain drawings from 1946, where broad, assertive marks already set him apart within the abstract movements of the time. The exhibition also features pieces in gouache and Indian ink, which, though smaller in format, carry the same force and dynamism as his monumental canvases.
A rare intimate perspective
Later works explore charcoal, pencil, and even graphite on black backgrounds, reflecting Soulages’ constant search for new forms of expression. Long preserved in the artist’s studio, these pieces invite visitors to enter the most personal and experimental dimension of his practice.
This is the first Parisian museum exhibition dedicated entirely to his paper-based art, a body of work that has remained in the shadows for too long. Nearly three years after his passing, the show offers a chance to appreciate a lesser-known yet decisive facet of Soulages’ legacy, proving once more why he remains one of the great figures of post-war abstraction.
With the exceptional support of Chanel, the city of Rodez, and the Musée Soulages—great patron of the Luxembourg Museum—the exhibition is made possible through a network of cultural partnerships that honor and extend the artist’s enduring legacy.