Villa de Pierre Soulages

English translation

The text above is the record as published by the Ministère de la Culture, in French. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Ministère de la Culture; it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

History

As Colette Soulages was originally from Sète, the couple, who have an apartment in Paris, had a villa built there. The attribution of the paternity of the villa was the subject of a dispute between the artist and the architect, the latter being Jean Rouzaud (1926-2014), who signed the plans and the building permit and has always claimed to be its author. But Pierre Soulages in his interviews attributes its entire responsibility to himself. In 1959 Jean Rouzaud is a young architect established in Sète, trained at the school of Beaux-Arts in Toulouse, approved by the Ministry of Reconstruction. Soulages in 1957 went to exhibit in the United States and certainly knew the architecture of Mies van der Rohe, art magazines of the time circulating many images of it. It can be thought that the architect Rouzaud was putting into practice the ideas of Soulages: a single-storey, horizontal, minimalist construction, with large rooms entirely glazed towards the sea, to the south. The plans were established in September 1959, the permit filed on 26 October 1959 was granted on 16 December 1959. The permit provides for the partial demolition of an existing house on the land, the erection of a studio, servant's room, washroom, guest bedroom, and a covered passage connecting this block to the main dwelling (living-room, bedroom and kitchen). To the extent that an application for reconstruction subsidy is mentioned in the permit, one can imagine that the architect partially preserves the previous construction (at the level of the foundations), even though he erects an entirely new villa in its conception. If there is no certificate of completion of works in the archives, one can assume that the construction was completed in 1960.

Description

The villa is located on sloping land enjoying an extraordinary view of the Mediterranean Sea. It is situated on the slopes of Mont-Saint-Clair, between the cemetery overlooking the sea, the lighthouse of Mont Saint-Clair which dominates it, and the Paul-Valéry museum, which was built a few years later, immediately to the east, dominating the panorama to the south-west. It is hidden by a dense parasol pine grove and surrounded by a high boundary wall of unrendered rubble stone masonry. The architecture is determined by the land, the light and the view. It is inspired by the modern movement with geometric volumes made of straight lines with flat terrace roofs (covered with pebbles), walls and slab are in raw concrete, open with large glazed bays. The villa was built on the site of an old house razed for the purpose, according to its views of the sea, on a slope with a cantilevered terrace, overhanging the land and the pool surrounded by cypress trees below. The structure is composed of three parallel concrete slabs. The materials are limited and sober: concrete, glass and slate. The villa is designed in two independent parts connected by a covered passage: the dwelling proper (133m2) and the studio (65 m2). The dwelling part comprises a living-room, a bedroom and service rooms (kitchen, bathroom and pantry), to the studio part are joined a guest bedroom and a servant's room. The studio was enlarged towards the north by a building which thus delimits a "sort of cloister" according to Soulages's words in an interview. Invisible from the street, enclosed within the walls of the property, the villa is designed to blend in with the landscape; from the sea, one can scarcely see more than a horizontal band. The villa is covered with a flat concrete roof, covered with pebbles, whose overhang is designed to serve as a sun screen. A terrace surrounds the dwelling part to the south, it is provided with a simple very fine metal handrail (in 0.042 tube) aligned on the horizon of the sea. The floor, paved in large grey slates, the very large glazed bays, fitted with metal frames, arranged at an angle, accentuate the effect of transparency and fusion with the landscape. Soulages had screen walls established, against the wind and to hide the views that he did not like. The interior is characterized by minimal furniture and few colours: almost entirely grey, white and black, essentially Saarinen furniture (Eero Saarinen, Finnish-born American architect and designer, 1910-1961). It would have remained original, on the other hand large Outrenoir canvases adorn the living-room today. This was provided with a "fireplace corner" with a fireplace without decoration set into the wall. The floors are in black slates with large joints, they continue from the inside to the terrace, accentuating the impression of space by the transparency of the glazing. Access to the garden is provided by straight stone staircases. The horizontal side, transparent, the impression of suspension in space above the ground is not without recalling the Farnsworth House, at Plano in Illinois designed and realized by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe between 1946 and 1951.