O-2170

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Print – Untitled

This serigraph is a reproduction of a 1954 ink-on-watercolour painting by Jean-Paul Riopelle. The expressive abstraction of the original work, with its webs of black lines hovering over blocks of colour, reflects Riopelle’s connection to the European avant-garde and the “Automatistes” of Quebec. Riopelle produced some of his best-known oil paintings in the 1950s, applying colour directly from the paint tube and using a palette knife to distribute it across the canvas in small touches for a mosaic effect.

The serigraph was printed by Peter Markgraf in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts around 1967 as part of an initiative to promote contemporary Canadian art. Markgraf and his siblings emigrated from Germany in the mid-1950s and developed a silkscreen process noted for its ability to faithfully replicate original works of fine art.

Jean-Paul Riopelle

Jean-Paul Riopelle was born in Montreal in 1923. In his youth he learned to draw and paint as a hobby. He took classes at the École des beaux-arts before completing a program of studies at the École du meuble in 1945. With fellow artists he formed a group called the “Automatistes,” whose members adopted a method of spontaneous painting and rejected Quebec’s religious and political establishment.

In 1946, Riopelle moved to Paris, where he met artists and art dealers associated with avant-garde movements such as surrealism. He broke with the Automatistes in 1950 but continued to develop his own style of spontaneous painting. The heavily textured, mosaic-like oil paintings he created in the decade that followed would become his most widely recognized work.

Riopelle achieved international recognition during his lifetime. His paintings are found in public collections around the world, and he has been the subject of several retrospective exhibitions in Canada. He became a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1969. When he died in 2002 at L’Isle-aux-Grues, Quebec, the province held a state funeral in his honour.