Jean-Paul Riopelle 1923 - 2002

Laing Galleries, Toronto

Private Collection, Saskatoon

The Private Eye, Saskatoon Gallery and Conservatory Corporation, February 12 - March 13, 1979, no. L79-12

Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, Toronto, 2007, p. 81

 

Pierre de Ligny Boudreau, Season within Season in Riopelle, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, 1980, p. 3

This painting is in excellent condition with peaks intact and without any losses or any apparent issues under UV. This work was recently cleaned and a treatment report is available upon request.
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Recognised as one of the giants of 20th century abstraction, Riopelle is doubtlessly the most internationally acclaimed Canadian painter.

Animated, evocative and in a state of contestant flux, Riopelle's oeuvre is suggestive of our notions of the painter's character as unpredictable and exciting yet distinctly recognisable. Roald Nasgaard writes about the common perception of Riopelle as a "...popular if misguided conception that Riopelle came as a force of nature straight out of the Canadian Forest, uncultured, instinctual, wild, a kind of "artiste sauvage", an image that Riopelle himself did not always discourage."

By the 1950's Riopelle had reached a pivotal moment in his career when the unfastened, dripping, haphazardness that had characterised his work slowly became more ordered, leading into his most distinguished Mosaic period. Of these works, Composition is a pearl.

Swatches of pure, vibrant colours applied with a palette knife appear arbitrarily allied yet, from a distance, the painting feels perfectly balanced and whole. The viewer's experience of this work is visceral. Instinctively, one dives in and the eye bounces cheerfully from colour to colour. Aptly, Pierre de Ligny Boudreau writes of viewing a Riopelle:

Doors and windows have been opened, new spaces disclosed, a luxury of vistas offered where the imagination is invited to wander discovering or rediscovering sentiments of joy and elation: a rare sensual experience.

Yseult Riopelle notes that this work likely dates from 1956.