20th-century French male artists

Pierre Jean Louis Germain Soulages (French: [sulaʒ]; 24 December 1919 – 25 October 2022) was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor. In 2014, President François Hollande of France described him as "the world's greatest living artist." His works are held by leading museums of the world, and there is a museum dedicated to his art in his hometown of Rodez.
Soulages is known as "the painter of black", owing to his interest in the colour "both as a colour and a non-colour. When light is reflected on black, it transforms and transmutes it. It opens a mental field all its own." He saw light as a work material; striations of the black surface of his paintings enable him to reflect light, allowing the black to come out of darkness and into brightness, thus becoming a luminous colour.Soulages produced 104 stained-glass windows for the Romanesque architecture of the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques from 1987 to 1994. He received international awards, and the Louvre in Paris held a retrospective of his works on the occasion of his centenary.

Georges Elbert Migot (27 February 1891 – 5 January 1976) was a prolific French composer. Though primarily known as a composer, he was also a poet, often integrating his poetry into his compositions, and an accomplished painter. He won the 1921 Prix Blumenthal.

Jean-Gabriel Domergue (4 March 1889 – 16 November 1962) was a French painter specialising in portraits of Parisian women.

Maurice Utrillo (French: [mɔʁis ytʁijo, moʁ-]), born Maurice Valadon; 26 December 1883 – 5 November 1955), was a French painter of the School of Paris who specialized in cityscapes. From the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painters of Montmartre to have been born there.

Charles Cottet (12 July 1863 – 20 September 1925) was a French painter, born at Le Puy-en-Velay and died in Paris. A famed post-impressionist, Cottet is known for his dark, evocative painting of rural Brittany and seascapes. He led a school of painters known as the Bande noire or "Nubians" group (for the sombre palette they used, in contrast to the brighter Impressionist and Postimpressionist paintings), and was friends with such artists as Auguste Rodin.

Jean-Paul Laurens (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃pol loʁɑ̃]; 28 March 1838 – 23 March 1921) was a French painter and sculptor, and one of the last major exponents of the French Academic style.

Jean-Jacques Henner (5 March 1829 – 23 July 1905) was a French painter, noted for his use of sfumato and chiaroscuro in painting nudes, religious subjects and portraits.

Yves Brayer (18 November 1907 – 29 May 1990) was a French painter known for his paintings of everyday life.
He was born in Versailles. He studied in Paris at the academies in Montparnasse starting in 1924, and then at the École des Beaux-Arts with Lucien Simon.Although he was independent and never belonged to a school, he was friends with Francis Gruber, the founder of the Nouveau Réalisme school.
He first exhibited in the salons of 1927, and then traveled to Spain, where the masterpieces in the Prado Museum had a profound influence on him. After a stay in Morocco, he went to Italy, where he won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1930.
He settled back in Paris in 1934, organizing his first solo exhibition. He remained in occupied Paris during World War II.
After the war, he traveled widely to Mexico, Egypt, Iran, Greece, Russia, the United States and Japan, trying to capture the light and colors of each country. He was interested in the techniques of copper plate engraving and lithography and produced illustrations for editions of such authors as Charles Baudelaire and Paul Claudel. He also created murals and wall ornamentations, tapestry cartoons, maquettes, sets, and costumes for the Théâtre Français and the operas of Paris, Amsterdam, Nice, Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Avignon.
In 1954 Brayer was awarded to Grand prix des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, and he was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1957. He was president of the Salon d'Automne for five years. In 1977 he was made curator of the Musée Marmottan in Paris, a position he held for 11 years.Brayer died in Paris in 1990.