The Riopelle year | The Press

On October 7, 2023, Jean Paul Riopelle would have been 100 years old. The Riopelle Foundation, whose mission is to celebrate his memory and his art, is orchestrating the event Full-scale, a large number of tributes that will be paid this year through exhibitions, classical music, circus, theatre, cinema, poetry and literature. Other places will also celebrate the artist, including galleries, so that 2023 will be the Riopelle year!

1. Exhibitions

There will be plenty of opportunities to appreciate the art of Jean Paul Riopelle this year. The first exhibition will be at the Simon Blais gallery (January 18-February 25) with the presentation of prints from 1967 to 1990. Then, from February 2 to April 23, there will be Jean Paul Riopelle/Bonnie Baxter, Taming the Beast at the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke, on Riopelle’s collaboration with Bonnie Baxter, his engraver for 10 years. Contexts of existencedesigned by Italian curator Irene Campolmi, will be presented at the Musée d’art de Joliette from February 11 to May 14, then at the Musée d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul, from June to November, before going on tour.

A tribute monument to Riopelle will be inaugurated at L’Isle-aux-Grues on March 12, then the exhibition Fingerprints will be presented from May to August at the Montcalm gallery in Gatineau. Riopelle and popular art: Object found, misappropriated, stolenprepared by the artist’s daughter, Yseult Riopelle, will be at the Musée de Charlevoix, in La Malbaie, from June to April 2024. An unprecedented theme, she says, as the museum’s folk art tradition and Riopelle’s attachment to this art from which he was greatly inspired.

An exhibition of works by 24 young artists inspired by Riopelle will take place on the Biosphere esplanade, from June 2023 to May 2024. Riopelle, workshop perfume, whose curator is also Yseult Riopelle, will be on view at the prestigious Fondation Maeght, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, in the south of France, from June to November. “A tribute to the friendship that linked Aimé and Marguerite Maeght to Jean Paul,” says Yseult Riopelle. With works borrowed from collections. And new models, produced from Riopelle’s work, when I was dancing for Merce Cunningham in New York. »

Next summer, the Montmagny library will offer In the footsteps of Riopelle, his latest creations. A realization of Huguette Vachon, last companion of the artist. In autumn, The Riopelle footprint will be in Trois-Rivières, as part of the International Poetry Festival.

In addition, a Riopelle retrospective is being created by curator Sylvie Lacerte at the National Gallery of Canada. It will be presented in October. “It will cover Riopelle’s early works up to later creations, exploring all of his work cycles and his favorite mediums,” says Sylvie Lacerte. The general director of the Riopelle Foundation, Manon Gauthier, is working so that this exhibition can then be shown elsewhere in Canada and abroad.

Finally, a “project inspired by the work of Jean Paul Riopelle” will soon be announced by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which does not officially participate in the celebrations organized by the Riopelle Foundation.

2. A coast-to-coast multidisciplinary tribute

The Riopelle Foundation has issued a call for projects across Canada with the aim of exhibiting unpublished works by multidisciplinary artists who have been inspired by Riopelle. The artists were selected in December and will be exhibited in the provinces next summer. “Our ambition is to bring together all these projects and make them a major Canadian exhibition,” says Manon Gauthier.

An interactive educational program, Studio Riopelle, has also been set up for schoolchildren. Since last fall, it has allowed them to express themselves on themes explored by Riopelle. In total, 5 million elementary and high school students from across Canada will have discovered Riopelle’s work and vision at the end of the celebrations.

3. Music

Blair Thomson, Serge Fiori and Nicolas Lemieux released an album in November that immerses us in the heart of Riopelle’s work. Symphonic Riopelle will be performed by the Orchester symphonique de Montréal on February 16, 17 and 18 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier. The show will be in Quebec on September 8 and 9, 2023, then elsewhere in Canada and Europe in 2024.

4. Cinema, theatre, circus and literature

The International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) will present five short films in tribute to Riopelle, from March 14 to 26, in Montreal. Robert Lepage and his troupe Ex Machina will present The Riopelle project (working title) at the Duceppe Theater, in Montreal, next spring, in Quebec City, in the fall of 2023, then elsewhere in Canada and Europe. In June, the 7 Doigts de la main will offer the circus show Riopelle Life-size, in Montreal, then on tour in Canada and France. Finally, in the fall, author and art historian Pierre B. Landry will launch a book on Riopelle entitled Beings, seasons and territories.

5. Espace Riopelle

The year 2023 will see the start of construction of Espace Riopelle on the site of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec. The building, reminiscent of the artist’s studio, was designed by architects FABG.

As of fall 2025, it will house the largest public collection of works by Riopelle, including some forty by British Columbia collector Michael Audain. A setting that will make the artist known.

This continuity will be ensured by the Riopelle Documentation and Archives Center which will provide access to a documentary collection on the Internet. And also by touring exhibitions and shows outside Quebec.

“The constellation we are proposing as part of this centenary runs the risk of marking history,” says Manon Gauthier. All the projects are spread over five seasons, because we have chosen to broadcast the projects internationally in 2024, so that in 2025, we will symbolically return home for the opening of Espace Riopelle. »

A great Canadian admirer of Riopelle, businessman and patron Michael Audain is moved to see the extent of this tribute. “I am very touched by the response given, with the variety of events that Manon Gauthier has managed to bring together. That’s wonderful. No other Canadian artist has been so celebrated. We should do it more often. It is important to celebrate, across Canada, Canadian artists for their accomplishments. It’s wonderful that Riopelle is honored as we mark, this year, the 75^e birthday Global denial. The Automatists deserve to be better known by younger generations in Canada. »