Jean-Paul Riopelle 1923 - 2002

Laing Galleries, Toronto

Private Collection, France

Gallery Moos, Toronto

Damkar-Burton Gallery, Ontario

Inter-Continental Art Agency Ltd., Vancouver

Private Collection, Ontario

Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting In Canada, Toronto, 2007, pp. 82 - 83

This work has been viewed under UV and it is in pristine condition. Some peaks missing. Some fissures at upper left corner. We would like to thank "In Restauro Conservart Inc." for examing this painting and their original notes are available upon request to Sotheby's.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Internationally, Jean-Paul Riopelle became the best known and most celebrated member of the Automatists. Beginning as early as the 1940's, he used a palette knife in the construction of his paintings and, with Barbeau and Borduas, experimented with tachist technique and automatic application. Roald Nasgaard notes:"...applying an overall sumptuous and radiant patchwork of colour, vigorously laid down in fragmented  touches, regularly sized and distributed, densely laced together, torqued imbricated and moiréed into a palpably tactile carpet of fleshy paint".

By the late 1950's these mosaic works morphed into a new phase in the artist's oeuvre. Nasgaard continues: "Riopelle, without really departing from his tachist application, had abandoned all-over structure and atomized brush strokes. Lines appeared, and the loose depiction of shapes, and gradually a kind of figuration emerged."

Works of this period, such as this one, are loose and spontaneous. Riopelle has said: "my idea is not abstraction but much more how I get there via a free gesture, (an autonomous) brush-stroke... to understand what nature is and so not to start from deconstructing nature, but to go in the direction of constructing the world".