Biographie

1923–2002

Born in Mon­tre­al, Riopelle stud­ied engi­neer­ing, archi­tec­ture and pho­tog­ra­phy before enrolling at the local ‘École des Beaux-Arts’. Dur­ing the 1940s Riopelle was a mem­ber of the so-called ‘Automa­tistes’, a group of Mon­tre­al artists inter­est­ed in the tech­niques of Sur­re­al­ism. In 1948 Riopelle signed the ‘Refus Glob­al’, an anti-estab­lish­ment and anti-cler­i­cal manifesto.
In 1947 Riopelle moved to Paris, where he briefly asso­ci­at­ed with the Sur­re­al­ists. His cir­cle includ­ed Samuel Beck­ett, André Bre­ton and Sam Fran­cis. Riopelle signed André Breton’s man­i­festo ‘Rup­ture Inau­gu­rale’ and in 1949 Riopelle had a first one-man show at Gallery La Drag­onne, a meet­ing place of the Surrealists.
Dur­ing the late 1940s Riopelle devel­oped his trade­mark style. He start­ed to throw paint onto the can­vas with a palette knife, brush or direct­ly from the tube to cre­ate a myr­i­ad of cubes and tri­an­gles. As such he was prac­tic­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ism, known in France as Tachism, and became rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the post-war Ecole de Paris. Riopelle’s volu­mi­nous impas­to became just as impor­tant as colour in order to cre­ate pow­er­ful atmos­pheres. In addi­tion to colour and vol­ume, Riopelle added his so-called ‘range of gloss’, a tech­nique of jux­ta­pos­ing colours so that light is reflect­ed off the sur­face in dif­fer­ent direc­tions and with vary­ing inten­si­ty. Riopelle always attempt­ed to fin­ish a paint­ing in one ses­sion, cre­at­ing a sort of obses­sive pres­ence in his work.
In 1953 Riopelle was select­ed to show at the Younger Euro­pean Painters exhi­bi­tion at the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um in New York. As of 1954 Riopelle start­ed exhibit­ing with the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. In 1958 the ‘Köl­nis­ch­er Kun­stvere­in’ host­ed a ret­ro­spec­tive exhi­bi­tion and in 1962 Riopelle was the sole artist rep­re­sent­ing Cana­da at Venice Bien­nale. Ret­ro­spec­tives exhi­bi­tions of Riopelle’s work were held at the Nation­al Gallery of Cana­da (1963) at the Maeght Foun­da­tion (1971) and at the ‘Musée d’Art Mod­erne de la Ville de Paris’ (1972).
Dur­ing the 1960s Riopelle exper­i­ment­ed with sculp­tur­al instal­la­tions and cre­at­ed ‘La Joute’ for the Mon­tre­al Olympic Stadium.
In 1972 Riopelle returned to Québec, from which he trav­elled North to expe­ri­ence the glacial land­scapes, inspir­ing the black and white ‘Ice­berg’ series dat­ing 1977–1978.

Riopelle was hon­oured with a major ret­ro­spec­tive at the Cen­tre Georges Pom­pi­dou, trav­el­ling to the ‘Musée Nation­al des Beaux-Arts de Québec’ and the ‘Musée d’art con­tem­po­rain de Mon­tréal’ dur­ing 1981–1982.
In 1959 Riopelle had begun a rela­tion­ship with the Amer­i­can painter Joan Mitchell, which last­ed until 1979. They kept sep­a­rate stu­dios and homes near Giverny, Monet’s haven. The cou­ple enjoyed a great intel­lec­tu­al and artis­tic exchange, but their alco­holism led to destruc­tive and abu­sive behav­iour. At her death in 1992 Riopelle paid trib­ute to Mitchell with ‘Hom­mage à Rosa Lux­em­burg’, a key-rep­re­sen­ta­tive of his lat­er work.
Riopelle died in Cana­da in 2002.