French abstract artist Pierre Soulages, who has died aged 102, was the Henry Ford of painting: for him there was just one colour, black, and he spent a lifetime exploring the light within it.

"I love the authority of black, its severity, its obviousness, its radicalism," declared the tall painter who was himself always clad in black.

"It's a very active colour. It lights up when you put it next to a dark colour," he said in an interview in February 2019.

Soulages's death was confirmed on Wednesday by his longtime friend Alfred Pacquement, who is also president of the Soulages museum in southern France.

Works by the best-selling French artist have commanded seven-figure sums, with a 1960 canvas of thick black stripes selling at auction at the Louvre for US$10.5 million in 2019.

A household name in France but less known internationally, his paintings hung in more than 110 museums around the world, including the Guggenheim in New York and London's Tate Gallery, with hundreds more housed in the Musee Soulages in his southern hometown of Rodez.

For his 100th birthday in December 2019, he was treated with a retrospective at the Louvre – a rare honour for a living artist.

"Beyond the black, his works are vivid metaphors from which each of us draws hope," French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter.

Soulages titled all his pieces "Peinture", or "Painting" in English, distinguishing them afterwards by their size and date of production.

One, called "Peinture 162 x 130 cm, 2 mai 1963", sold for almost six million euros on Wednesday, auctioneers Sotheby's said. (AFP)