Jean-Paul Riopelle

Geert van der Veen Fine Art, Toronto
Acquis auprès de celle-ci par le propriétaire actuel en 1979

The colours are fairly accurate in the catalogue illustration although the overall tonality is more luminous in the original work. Moreover, the image does not accurately convey the richness and thickness of the impastos. The work is executed on its original canvas and is not relined. The surface presents some hairline cracks located mainly on the lower right corner. In correspondence with one of the cracks by the lower right corner, there is one restoration visible under Ultra Violet light inspection. The upper and lower left corners are slightly wavy. This work is in very good condition overall.
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Lauded as one of the most revolutionary Canadian artists and thinkers of the 20th century, Jean Paul Riopelle aimed to propel both contemporary art and society into the modern era. In 1946, Riopelle travelled to Paris where he was welcomed by both the Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist artists. At first, the expatriate allied himself with the Surrealists, participating in the international exhibition of Surrealism organized by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp but by the late 1940s, he began leaning towards a more abstract style which would define his work from that point forward. After his inclusion in Vehemences Confrontees (Opposing Forces), a 1951 exhibition organized by the painter Georges Mathieu featuring international artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning. Riopelle was considered part of the growing Abstract Expressionist trend.

Shortly after his arrival in Paris, Riopelle turned to the palette knife and spatulas, unique new tools which allowed his paintings to blossom into glittering mosaics and that quickly became the artistic signature of the artist. Compositions once chaotic and informal became stabilized and harmonious, firmly rooted by these new colorful bits of geometry. Like Cézanne, Riopelle used these shard-like brushstrokes as a structural tool with which he could build and direct his compositions. Works such as Sans Titre  from the early 1950s are Riopelle at his most vibrant and expressive, as he passed the threshold of achieving his own unique style of modernist art.

Traditionally abstraction is a process of decomposition, of taking apart figures and forms until they exist in their most basic, elemental states. Although the work of Jean Paul Riopelle is linked stylistically and theoretically to that of the great American Abstract Expressionists, the artist ironically distanced himself from the very term “abstraction”. Instead, Riopelle described his work as a process of creation and cohesion. To him, it was the very antithesis of abstraction's fragmentation. The artist was known for executing his paintings in a hypnotic trance-like state in which each physical and emotional sensation would lead him to his next brushstroke, color or place on the canvas. His paintings are pulsating organisms, birthed from intense contemplation and a scientific yet instinctive understanding of the relationships between forms and colors. These web-like tapestries are not paintings of the mind, understood through analysis but rather, soulful expressions of nature to be read by pure sensorial intuition.

With its vibrant colors, Sans Titre is testimony to the complexity of Riopelle’s art, a virtual dance, guided by its own rhythm in colors and material. Playing with the juxtaposition of textures, shiny and mate, Riopelle organizes games of light, inviting the spectator’s gaze into the rich and kaleidoscopic surface of the painting.