Jean Paul Riopelle

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (acquired directly from the artist)
Acquavella Galleries, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 2005

Basel, Bale Kunsthalle; Neuchâtel, Musée des beaux-arts, Appel, Matta, Moreni, Riopelle, 1959, no. 88 (titled Composition B 2)
New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Jean Paul Riopelle, Grands formats 1952 - 1975, April 1977, cat. no. 1, n.p., illustrated in color
Paris, Musée d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou; Mexico, Musée d'Art Moderne; Caracas, Musée des beaux-arts; Montréal, Québec, Musée du Québec et Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Jean Paul Riopelle, Peinture 1946 - 1977, September 1981 - August 1982, cat. no. 20, p. 39, illustrated (Paris), cat. no. 17, p. 43, illustrated (titled Sans Titre) (Québec)
New York, Acquavella Galleries, Jean Paul Riopelle, 1999

Julien Alvard, "D'une nature sans limites à une peinture sans bornes," Art d'aujord'hui, série 4, no. 5, July 1953, p. 4, illustrated
Canada d'aujourd'hui, no. 58, January 1982 (review of 1982 Montréal exhibition)
Canadian Art, vol. 9, no. 4, Spring, 1992
Yseult Riopelle, Jean-Paul Riopelle: Catalogue Raisonné Tome I, 1939 - 1953, Montreal, 2004, cat. no. 1952.009H.1952, p. 159 and p. 377, illustrated in color

This painting is in very good condition overall. Please refer to the department for detailed condition report. The canvas is framed in a light blonde wood strip frame.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Lauded as one of the most revolutionary Canadian artists and thinkers of the 20th century, Jean Paul Riopelle aimed to propel both contemporary art and society into the modern era. In a trajectory that parallels New York in the late 1940s, artistic debate and intellectual ferment traveled from Europe to North America, and young artists were galvanized by the liberating possibilities in all aspects of life: art, politics, culture. In Canada, under the tutelage of Paul- Emile Borduas, Riopelle and his peers, "Les Automatistes" relied on Surrealist preoccupations with the unconscious to challenge the provinciality of post-war Quebec just as their contemporaries in New York were questioning American traditions. In 1946, Riopelle brought the movement and the ideology behind it to Paris where he was welcomed by both the Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist artists. At first, the expatriate allied himself with the Surrealists, participating in the international exhibition of Surrealism organized by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp but by the late 1940s, he began leaning towards a more abstract style which would define his work from that point forward. After his inclusion in Vehemences Confrontees (Opposing Forces), a 1951 exhibition organized by the painter Georges Mathieu featuring international artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning. Riopelle was considered part of the growing Abstract Expressionist trend. The current work, 15 Cheveux Citroën, was painted the following year and marks a transitional point in Riopelle's career. Elaborating on the classical drips and splashes of the Action Painting vernacular, Riopelle turned to the palette knife, a new tool which allowed his paintings to blossom into glittering mosaics. Compositions once chaotic and informal became stabilized and harmonious, firmly rooted by these new colorful bits of geometry. Like Cézanne, Riopelle used these shard-like brushstrokes as a structural tool with which he could build and direct his compositions. Works such as 15 Cheveux Citroën from the early 1950s are Riopelle at his most vibrant and expressive, as he passed the threshold of achieving his own unique style of modernist art.

Traditionally abstraction is a process of decomposition, of taking apart figures and forms until they exist in their most basic, elemental states. Although the work of Jean Paul Riopelle is linked stylistically and theoretically to that of the great American Abstract Expressionists, the artist ironically distanced himself from the very term ``abstraction.'' Instead, Riopelle described his work as a process of creation and cohesion. To him, it was the very antithesis of abstraction's fragmentation. The artist was known for executing his paintings in a hypnotic trance-like state in which each physical and emotional sensation would lead him to his next brushstroke, color or place on the canvas. His paintings are pulsating organisms, birthed from intense contemplation and a scientific yet instinctive understanding of the relationships between forms and colors. These web-like tapestries are not paintings of the mind, understood through analysis but rather, soulful expressions of nature to be read by pure sensorial intuition.

Nature's movements and patterns have been one of the foundations of Riopelle's work, ever since he was a child sketching wild geese on the gulf of the Saint Lawrence River. He understood both the calm of grazing caribou on Quebec's still plains as well as the turbulence of a forest fire. Riopelle transcribed nature's clashes and schisms and then, like a Shaman who speaks the language of the trees, he reconciled these poles into a cohesive whole. Canvases such as 15 Cheveux Citroën are alive with the mysterious rhythms and molecular machinery of Mother Nature. They move and breathe like living beings, each cell working and fighting to achieve equilibrium. Cézanne once said that "One must not paint the sun. One must become the sun," and indeed Riopelle did not merely depict nature but succumbed to its powers until its very forces resided within him. He did not let the images of his mind dictate the shape of the space, but instead projected his bodily rhythms onto its surface, channeling the vibrations of the natural world.

15 Cheveux Citroën is the embodiment of this birth by divine possession. As we approach the canvas we are swept up into Riopelle's vortex. Waves of color overwhelm our eye as we visually explore the canvas's thick brushwork and textured layers. The horses of the title emerge organically from this cavalcade, their essence newly defined in the language of pigment. The paint becomes their flesh and his brushstrokes, their grace.