Riopelle the innovator | The Press

The Simon Blais gallery opens the ball for the celebrations of the 100^e birthday of Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002) with Riopelle prints!the exhibition of 75 prints produced from 1967 to 1990. A deployment of an incredible variety that highlights the exceptional gift of innovator of the Quebec master.

Over the past 20 years, Simon Blais has presented several exhibitions of prints by Riopelle. Since Prints and Mutationsin 2005, until Endless suites, giant lithographsin 2015, via giant papers, Memoirs of workshops, forest strength or The migrations of the bestiary. It must be said that Simon Blais probably has the largest stock of works on paper by Riopelle in Canada.

The gallery owner has been interested in engraving since the beginning of his gallery, in 1989. The eldest daughter of the Quebec master, Yseult Riopelle, took him on a tour of her father’s Parisian printers in 1997. “I met each of its printers who each told their story about Riopelle, says Simon Blais. How they had worked with Jean Paul. What he asked, demanded, brought as an idea. »

This exhibition, which pays homage to him, will delight fans of Riopelle. It will also allow curious aesthetes to rediscover the great passion he had for creation. And his constant drive to flush out new ideas while recycling his own images. A common thread in the form of a wink that made him familiar.

Simon Blais hung a dozen etchings from Bestiary by Riopelle, made in 1968 for the Maeght gallery, whose Arte printing house would be the lair of his first engravings. “He hated engraving at first, but at Arte, he realized that he could have fun engraving, says Simon Blais. He then made his first lithos and etchings in 1967 and then continued. »

Lithographs

Riopelle, at that time, had lithographs printed with leaf prints, which was not convenient, says Simon Blais. He had managed to find a way to keep the sheets from sticking to the ink roller.

The exhibition includes two copies of his series of Sequelsvery large lithos that Maeght had begun to print in the early 1970s. Riopelle made so many editions of them that he later used them as a support for his works, in particular for his triptych The juggler, from 1989. A mixed technique with collages, in particular the shape of a Gallic helmet that Riopelle often recycled, after discovering it on a box of French Gauloises cigarettes. He found that this overturned helmet looked like a bird.

There is also a lithograph on Japanese paper – from a series dedicated in 1983 to the geese of Cap-Tourmente – pasted in the center of his work wild geese, from 1984, worked with spray paint, brush and splashes of ink. Another example of recycling and innovation.

In a small room, Simon Blais exhibits, for the first time, the entire group of lithos from the series rope talk, in which Riopelle uses the Aboriginal string game. With winks for each frame. His friend Champlain Charest’s seaplane. This one that “calls” the original. Or the representation of Galarneau, our Quebec sun.

Exhibited in the window, the screen printing beyond that looks good. It was published in 1995 by the ex-Moos Gallery in Toronto from a painting by Riopelle in 1989. “The painting was called Beyondso Walter Moos called her beyond that », says Simon Blais.

The engravings

Finally, Simon Blais obviously exhibits several of the copper engravings produced by Bonnie Baxter and her Scarabée studio for Riopelle in the mid-1980s, in particular from the series Anticosti. But also etching Shame on anyone who thinks wrongfrom 1987.

“When Riopelle delivered his complete print of this work to the Lelong Gallery who was financing the printing, they failed to realize that what he had written was, in fact, Bonnie be who thinks wrong ! It’s a beautiful anecdote,” says the gallery owner.

The Riopelle year begins wonderfully with this exhibition, a veritable explosion of happiness, so much do we savor the abundance of Riopelle, this workaholic, this genius of art, this tireless innovator. “He had a brain that obviously didn’t work like ours, with a unique look,” says Simon Blais. He was fantastic…”

Riopelle prints!at the Simon Blais gallery, until February 25