Jean-Paul RIOPELLE

Jean-Paul Riopelle: Life, Work and Original Lithographs from the Maeght Workshop

Quebec’s most celebrated painter, Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923-2002) spent more than four decades in France and became one of the leading voices of post-war abstraction in Paris. A co-signatory of the 1948 manifesto Refus global, he was associated in the 1950s with the School of Paris and Lyrical Abstraction, building up his canvases with a palette knife in dense, jewel-like patches of colour. Painter, sculptor and printmaker, he produced a substantial body of original prints, most of them lithographs published by Maeght from the late 1960s onwards.

In Paris, Galerie Le Coin des Arts offers original lithographs by Jean-Paul Riopelle, published by Maeght and printed at the Arte Adrien Maeght studio, including sheets from the 1979 suite Le Sablier. Each work is chosen for the quality of the impression, its provenance and its condition.

Early Years in Montreal

Riopelle was born in Montreal on 7 October 1923. As a boy he took drawing lessons from the painter Henri Bisson. He enrolled at the École polytechnique in 1941, but soon turned to art, studying at the École des beaux-arts and then at the École du meuble, where in 1943 he met Paul-Émile Borduas. Borduas became his mentor and steered him towards a painting free of any subject.

The circle that formed around Borduas, known as the Automatistes, adapted the Surrealist idea of automatic writing to painting. Riopelle took part in the group’s first exhibition in Montreal in April 1946. That same year, on a visit to New York, he called at the studio of the British-born printmaker Stanley William Hayter and learnt the basics of intaglio printing.

Paris, André Breton and the Refus Global

Settling in Paris in 1947, Riopelle met André Breton and exhibited that summer in the International Surrealist Exhibition at the Galerie Maeght. Back in Montreal, the manifesto Refus global, written by Borduas and co-signed by Riopelle, was published on 9 August 1948; its attack on the conservatism of Quebec society is now seen as a turning point in the province’s cultural history.

Returning to France at the end of 1948, he held his first Paris solo show in 1949 at La Dragonne (Galerie Nina Dausset), for which Breton wrote a preface describing him as a “superior trapper”.

The 1950s: Mosaics, London and New York

In 1951 he featured in Véhémences confrontées, the exhibition organised by Georges Mathieu that first set European painters alongside Americans such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. His work now took the form of the so-called “mosaics”: large, all-over compositions of pure colour laid down with the knife. In 1953 he showed with Pierre Loeb in Paris and was included in the Guggenheim’s Younger European Painters; from 1954, Pierre Matisse in New York gave him regular solo exhibitions.

British collectors discovered him early. In 1956 the London dealers Gimpel Fils mounted a solo exhibition of his paintings, gouaches and watercolours, and went on to include him in their summer and “Collectors’ Choice” shows into the early 1960s. The Tate holds his oil painting Perspectives (1956), a fine example of the period. In the summer of 1955 he had met the American painter Joan Mitchell, who remained his partner until 1979; among his close friends was Sam Francis.

Honours followed: he represented Canada at the 1954 Venice Biennale, had a retrospective at the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne in 1958, received an honourable mention at the Guggenheim International Award that year, and was selected for documenta II (1959) and documenta III (1964) in Kassel.

Venice, Sculpture and the Maeght Years

Having returned to sculpture at the end of the 1950s, Riopelle was the sole artist representing Canada at the 1962 Venice Biennale, where he won the UNESCO Prize. The National Gallery of Canada staged a retrospective in 1963, and in 1969 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

In 1966 he joined the Galerie Maeght, which organised his solo exhibitions and opened its workshops to him: the Arte Adrien Maeght printing studio in Paris and the ceramics studio at the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. In 1967 he and Mitchell moved to Vétheuil, north-west of Paris. The Fondation Maeght showed the plaster of his monumental fountain La Joute in 1970-71 (the bronze was installed at Montreal’s Olympic Park in 1976) and gave him a retrospective in 1971, followed by the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1972.

The North, the Return to Quebec and a Final Tribute

Trips to the Canadian North inspired the Jeux de ficelles and Icebergs series, and after he set up a studio in the Laurentians in 1974, snow geese became a recurring motif. Between 1979 and 1981 he created a ceramic wall for the Fondation Maeght with Hans Spinner. The Centre Pompidou’s retrospective, Riopelle, peinture 1946-1977 (30 September – 16 November 1981), later travelled to Quebec City, Montreal and Caracas.

Riopelle settled permanently in Quebec in 1990, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts mounted a retrospective in 1991. After Joan Mitchell’s death on 30 October 1992, he painted Hommage à Rosa Luxemburg, a frieze of thirty paintings now in the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. He died at Isle-aux-Grues on 12 March 2002 and was given a state funeral. His centenary in 2023 was marked in France by Parfums d’ateliers at the Fondation Maeght, and in October 2026 the Quebec museum opens a pavilion devoted to him, the Espace Riopelle.

Riopelle as a Printmaker

Although he had first tried printmaking in 1946, Riopelle only became a committed printmaker at Maeght. At Arte, lithography let him carry the energy of his painting – splashes, drips, tangled lines – directly onto stone and zinc; he also made etchings, and from 1967 cut up lithographic proofs to build large collages. His lithographs were issued by Maeght Éditeur as single sheets, in the gallery’s review Derrière le miroir and in collaborative suites with poets.

The outstanding example is Le Sablier (1979), a suite of six original lithographs accompanying a poem by Jacques Dupin, printed by Arte on Arches wove paper in a print run of 90 numbered copies plus 15 hors commerce; a copy is held by the Centre Pompidou. Riopelle also contributed to Walasse Ting’s illustrated book 1¢ Life (1964), edited by Sam Francis.

His prints are catalogued in Yseult Riopelle’s Catalogue raisonné des estampes (Hibou Éditeurs, Montreal, 2005), compiled by the artist’s daughter alongside the four volumes of the catalogue raisonné of his paintings (1999-2014). Entries are cited by a number combining year and technique, such as “1967.22EST.LI”.

Collecting Riopelle’s Original Prints

With his major canvases now commanding very high prices, Riopelle’s lithographs are the most accessible way to own a work by this leading figure of Lyrical Abstraction. When assessing a print, look at the technique, the print run and how the sheet is numbered (numbered impression, artist’s proof or “HC”), whether it is pencil-signed, its reference in the Yseult Riopelle catalogue, the publisher (Maeght) and printer (Arte), whether it belongs to a suite such as Le Sablier, its provenance and its condition – large Arches sheets can tone slightly over time.

Original print or reproduction? Maeght exhibition posters and unsigned plates from Derrière le miroir circulate widely, as do reproductions. An original print is conceived by the artist for printing, produced in a limited edition and usually signed and numbered in pencil; a poster normally carries lettering and is neither signed nor numbered.

Galerie Le Coin des Arts selects Riopelle’s original lithographs with close attention to authenticity, provenance and condition, and can advise on conservation framing with a suitable mount. You may also enjoy prints by Sam Francis, Joan Miró, Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages.

Sources and references

François-Marc Gagnon, Jean Paul Riopelle: Life & Work, Art Canada Institute · Tate, Jean-Paul Riopelle · The Canadian Encyclopedia · Centre Pompidou, Le Sablier (1979) · Yseult Riopelle, Jean-Paul Riopelle. Catalogue raisonné des estampes, Hibou Éditeurs, Montreal, 2005.