Biography
Louis-Joseph Soulas (b. Orléans, France 1 September 1905 – d. Paris March 26 1954) attended, from the age of twelve, lessons at the drawing school of the Gobelins factory. Between 1919-22, he went to the Estienne school to learn wood engraving with Léon Jouenne (1873-1961), Robert Bonfils, Henry de Waroquier and Mathurin Méheut. The illustration, in 1923, from Gardien du feu by Anatole Le Braz, in collaboration with the latter, marked the beginning of his career. After meeting, in 1925, during military service, André Jacquemin, he gradually moved on to copper engraving, which he worked with a chisel. In 1928, Soulas was founder, with eleven other engravers (including Yves Alix, Amédée Dubois de La Patellière and Robert Lotiron of La Jeune Gravure Contemporaine. He was also a member of the Society of French Painters-Engravers, of the Salon d’ Automne and the Salon des Indépendants. During WW2 he was taken prisoner and sent to Pomerania in 1939. On his return in 1941, he exhibited works from when he was captive and made engravings of destroyed Orleans. He was an internationally renowned printmaker, of book illustrations and numerous plates of his native Beauce, near Orléans, where he was director of the École de beaux-arts. He met an untimely death on a platform of the Gare d'Austerlitz, Paris.
