(Quebec) The new pavilion dedicated to Jean Paul Riopelle at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) will present an exceptional collection of paintings by this great painter thanks to donations of works worth just over $ 100 million, has learned Press.
The construction of this pavilion, which was revealed last week, will be officially announced by Prime Minister François Legault on Thursday.
The government will invest $ 20 million in this project, which is estimated to be close to $ 45 million. It will add 7 million, from 2024, to ensure its operation.
The Riopelle pavilion will bring together the works of the painter that the MNBAQ already owns, the most famous of which are Tribute to Rosa Luxembourg and Sun dust.
However, according to our information, the museum’s collection will be considerably improved. Patrons and collectors will donate works worth just over $ 100 million. These include businessmen Michael Audain, Pierre Lassonde and André Desmarais – founding members of the Riopelle Foundation. Approximately 75 works will thus be added to the public collection.
According to this foundation, Riopelle was part in 2019 of the top 100 modern and contemporary artists from the Artprice index.
PHOTO IDRA LABRIE, PROVIDED BY THE MNBAQ
Tribute to Rosa Luxembourg is also part of the MNBAQ collection.
Two years earlier, two works from the mosaic period, Untitled (1953) and North wind (1952-1953), sold respectively 5.7 million US and 5.5 million US, which placed them second and third among the most expensive works of art in Canada, she indicates on her website. According to data released by auction houses Christie’s, Heffel and Sotheby’s, 26 Riopelles sold for US $ 1 million or more between 2006 and 2019.
This Friday, The dark, an oil on canvas by Riopelle painted in 1954, will be on sale at auction at Christie’s, in Paris. The estimated price of this painting, never put on the market before, oscillates between 2.5 and 4 million euros (between 3.5 and 5.7 million CAN).
In its minibudget unveiled last week, the government had indicated in 4 short sentences, among the 354 pages of the document, that it intended to “invest in a large-scale cultural project”, without revealing its nature. It is the project of a new pavilion dedicated to Riopelle in question, we had discovered. It takes place as part of the celebrations planned for the centenary of the artist’s birth, in 2023.
Originally, a “Riopelle wing” was to be created at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) – the painter’s hometown – under an agreement between the Riopelle Foundation and the museum, but the project was aborted. last year. The option of moving the project to Quebec with the construction of a new pavilion at the MNBAQ was finally chosen.