Jean-Paul Riopelle
Signed Quebec's Refus Global, moved to Paris, and built mosaics of paint with a palette knife.
Jean-Paul Riopelle was born in Montreal in 1923 and was one of the signatories of Refus Global in 1948, the manifesto by the Automatistes that attacked the grip of the church on Quebec society and effectively ended several of its authors' careers there. He moved to Paris, where Breton showed him and where he became one of the best-known North American painters in Europe. The mature work of the 1950s builds a dense mosaic of small palette-knife strokes across the entire canvas. He lived with Joan Mitchell for twenty-five years, returned to Quebec, and died there in 2002.
The 1950s mosaic paintings lead this market decisively, which is centred on Canada with a substantial French component. The paint is applied very thickly with a knife and is structurally heavy, so cracking, cupping and losses at the edges are common and should be assessed properly. Riopelle also worked extensively in watercolour, ink, collage and lithography, and there is a very large printed output. The catalogue raisonne prepared by Yseult Riopelle is the reference, and forgeries are a known problem in the market.
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