This exceptional unique work by Pierre Soulages exemplifies his celebrated outrenoir practice, in which black paint is manipulated to reflect and transmit light rather than absorb it. The composition is structured around commanding horizontal bands of dense black punctuated by luminous passages of deep cobalt and ultramarine blue, which emerge from beneath and alongside the dark surface with extraordinary intensity. Textured striations carved through the paint in the lower register create a rhythmic play of reflected light that animates the entire canvas. As a dated unique work hand signed by the artist, this painting carries the full weight of Soulages's singular contribution to postwar abstraction.