Jean-Paul Riopelle

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Galerie Laffitte, Montréal
Acquired from the above by the current owner in 1992

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Exhibition of recent paintings and watercolors, 15 March - 15 April 1955
São Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna, 3 Biennale, 1955; catalogue, p. 96, no. 17
Rio de Janeiro, Museu de Arte Moderna, Artistas Canadenses Paul-Émile Borduas e Jean-Paul Riopelle,  24 November - 11 December 1955; catalogue, no. 17
Munich, Galerie Thomas, Art Basel, 2015; catalogue, p. 50, illustrated

Yseult Riopelle, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Catalogue Raisonné, Tome 2, 1954-1959, Montréal, 2004, p. 171, no. 1954.030H.1954, illustrated in colour

The colours are fairly accurate in the catalogue illustration anthough the image does not accurately convey the richness and texture and transparencies of the surface, its impastos and drippings. The work is executed on its original canvas and is not relined. There are few drying hairline cracks scattered throughout the surface, mainly located on the black impastos. Under Ultra Violet light inspection there is no evidence of restoration. This work is in very good condition.
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COMP 
Gerhard Richter, Cage 6, CR 897-6, 2006 © Gerhard Richter 2017 (0288/2017)

The beginning of the 1950s was an essential period and turning point in Jean-Paul Riopelle’s career and he is today known as one of the most important artists in the history of 20^th century art. Often compared to the all-over technique of Jackson Pollock’s drippings, the paintings from this period were a real manifesto of Riopelle’s art. By spreading the paint with a knife, just as Gerard Richter used a spatula loaded with pigment, and orchestrating different levels of depth, Riopelle creates a play of light which asks the spectator to clear a path across the dense and kaleidoscopic surface. At the heart of Untitled, 1954 a pictorial space thus opens out, drawing us into a visual dance to a rhythm dictated to us by the painter.

A mosaic of sometimes bright, sometimes muted colours, Untitled, 1954 is also the result of a reflection on time and space. At the centre of the canvas, the whites reply to the blues and greens, creating a glimmering glow within the dense pictorial mass. Like a stained glass window crisscrossed by a white, zenith light, the work vibrates in a polychromatic yet harmonious explosion. All of Riopelle’s virtuosity can be found here, as the artists combines pigments and paint to perfection, creating a free, unlimited space that seems to brim over the edges of the frame.