Jean-Paul Riopelle

Jean-Paul Riopelle – Tuition from Paul-Emile Borduas, inspiration from Wols

Jean-Paul Riopelle was born in Montreal on 7 October 1923. Having started studying mathematics in 1940, he soon gave that up in favour pf painting which he pursued at the Art Academy of Montreal where his teacher was the Franco-Canadian master Paul-Emile Borduas. Jean-Paul Riopelle left his homeland in 1947 to move to Paris, the coveted city and meeting point of numerous artists, where he came into contact with the contemporary art movements of Action Painting, Surrealism and Automatism and associated with significant representatives of Informel and Tachist art such as Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze who had found fame with the pseudonym Wols. Riopelle was deeply impressed by his pioneering work and had a lasting effect on the search for his own style, which he found in Action Painting. 

The path to Canadian master of Action Painting

Jean-Paul Riopelle found world fame in the 1960s as the most important Canadian representative of Action Painting, but at the beginning of his career, this breakthrough was unthinkable. His early years were characterised by a very classical approach, and he practiced Action Painting in its unfiltered pure form, letting the paint simply drip onto his canvases. As a member of the Franco-Canadian artist’s circle Les Automatistes, founded by his teacher Paul-Emile Borduas, he deliberately relied on spontaneity as a supporting principle in the creation of his artwork. It was only in 1950 that he changed again his working method, focusing on a pronounced chromaticism, ceremoniously flinging his paint onto the canvas and spreading it with a palette knife – entirely in the tradition of the grand master of Action Painting, Jackson Pollock. Th result was colourful, mosaic-like pictures which, with time, found a large audience. 

The breakthrough: Biennale, Documenta, UNESCO and Olympia

Jean-Paul Riopelle was in a relationship with the Abstract Expressionist painter Joan Mitchell for twenty years, having met in 1956. He worked their first Point de rencontre artistically in a picture with this name, and they lived together for a time in Paris and Vétheuil, where Claude Monet also had his retirement home. Riopelle worked with his student and assistant Michel Vermeulen in the monumental work Hommage á Rosa Luxembourg. Jean-Paul Riopelle received prizes and honours for his art such as the UNESCO Prize in 1962 on the occasion of his participation at the Biennale, and was a guest at Documenta in Kassel twice. One particularly honourable commission was the design of sculptures and fountains for the Olympic stadium in his hometown of Montreal. Riopelle cultivated lifelong fruitful relationships with numerous important artist personalities including the writers Samuel Beckett and André Berton as well as the Swiss painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

Jean-Paul Riopelle died at the age of 72 in Ile-aux-Grues near Québec on 12 March 2002. That same year, his works were presented in the group exhibition Art Chicago 2002.