Pierre Soulages et Édouard Jaguer. Œuvres et contexte dans l’art français d’après-guerre

This article, which proposes an original perspective of the Parisian and international artistic context between 1946 and 1958, recounts the little known participation of Pierre Soulages in the exhibitions and publications organized by the poet and art critic Edouard Jaguer, who played an important role in the debate surrounding non-figurative painting in postwar Paris. Director of the revue Phases, Jaguer put forward a very open definition of the new non-figurative research and was opposed to the “cold” geometric forms and the de nitions of abstraction proposed by Degand and Estienne, preferring automatism as “passion against reason” and “hot against cold.” He also attempted to reconcile Surrealism, automatism and abstraction. He defended an open conception of abstraction against labels (“tachism,” “new School of Paris”). Soulages never claimed any affliation to a group or to a movement, never participated in the exhibitions of one tendency or another. Nevertheless, with Jaguer, the opposite occurred: both were attached to the idea of the freedom of the observer to imagine, and were especially interested in the poetic experiences that led them to the accomplishment of a work, whether painted or written.