A painting by Quebec painter Jean Paul Riopelle found a buyer for 5.3 million during an auction at Christie’s in Paris.
Entitled The Dark/There’s a color walking around and people hiding in that color, this oil on canvas with ambitious dimensions (280 x 200 cm), painted in 1954, had never been offered publicly before. Before the sale, it was estimated to start at between 3.5 million and 5.7 million.
It is the most expensive work sold during this auction, indicates a press release issued by Christie’s. In total, sales reached 27.6 million during the event, which took place on Friday. According to Christie’s website, the painting “offers a symphony of dazzling colors: a myriad of tones of blue, red, orange, yellow, green and purple cascading down. […], applied with virtuosity according to the artist’s signature technique, the palette knife ”.
This sale comes as we learned, last week, of the launch of an architectural competition for the construction of the Espace Riopelle, the new pavilion of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec (MNBAQ). Work will begin in the summer of 2023 and the opening is scheduled for 2025.
This pavilion will bring together the works of the painter that the institution already owns, the most famous of which are Tribute to Rosa Luxembourg and Sun dust. However, according to information previously reported in Press, the MNBAQ collection will be enhanced. Patrons and collectors will donate works worth just over $ 100 million.