Paris celebrates Riopelle | The Press

(Paris) The celebrations of the centenary of the birth of Jean Paul Riopelle end in Paris with two exhibitions that The Press has seen first. First, a magnificent display of around twenty paintings, sculptures and collages, entitled From one continent to another, at the Clavé Fine Art gallery, in the Montparnasse district. And a hanging at the Center Pompidou, with seven essential works by Riopelle, including the immense and splendid canvas Chevreusefrom 1954.

It is with “great enthusiasm” that the Center Pompidou responded to the suggestion of the Riopelle Foundation to mark the centenary of Riopelle’s birth (1923-2002) with the exhibition, until 1^er April, works belonging to the museum and private collections, including the Maeght family, named after the dealer and friend of Riopelle, Aimé Maeght. The curator of the Center Pompidou, Christian Briend, mentioned it during a visit with former senator Serge Joyal, co-founder of the Riopelle Foundation.

“Riopelle is a major painter of this period of art history,” says Christian Briend. We don’t see it enough and it suffers greatly from photographic reproduction. You have to come and see the works to realize the power of his pictorial material and his work as a colorist. »

The works hung were part of Workshop perfumes, presented at the Maeght Foundation, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, last summer. Mr. Briend would have liked the exhibition at Pompidou to be larger, but he chose key works by Riopelle, including the immense painting (3 mx 3.91 m) Chevreuse that the artist painted in 1954 in the studio he occupied in Montmartre.

Chevreuse is a work that we rarely see. Christian Briend says that this oil is the largest of the series to which it belongs. “The last time I saw her here was during the Riopelle retrospective in 1981,” adds Serge Joyal. She is magnificent. »

Other works on display include Sawn cobs, a collage created in the Maeght workshop in the Montparnasse district in 1967, when Riopelle worked there practically day and night, passionate about lithography. Let us also cite Iceberg No. VIII, from 1977, a beautiful knife work, placed next to Mid-summer at Georges, a donation to the Center Pompidou from the widow of Pierre Matisse, one of Riopelle’s merchants. A captivating and unique work, with its atypical cross shape and its panoramic aspect. And a reminder of the friendship that linked Riopelle to the art critic Georges Duthuit.

Two snow shovels, from 1971, also stands out with this set of strings revealing a figure. Finally, the impressive Mitchikanabikong takes up an entire wall of the room. A work whose whites are altered, but this problem does not prevent us from appreciating the triptych where a sort of minimalist graphics is superimposed on the impasto.

The Center Pompidou will have to close for major renovations – between 2025 and 2030 – but curator Christian Briend has a project for an exhibition on gestural abstraction which will be presented outside the walls of the Center (why not at the future new Riopelle pavilion in Quebec ?) and which will include works by Jean Paul Riopelle dating from 1945 to 1965.

Clavé Fine Art Gallery

In the meantime, you can also enjoy works by Riopelle by going, between now and February 10, to the Clavé Fine Art gallery, founded by Antoine Clavé (grandson of the Catalan painter Antoni Clavé) in the former workshop by the French sculptor César, not far from Place Denfert-Rochereau.

Riopelle’s works fit well into this bright gallery, whose interior was redesigned by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. Coming from French private collections and a “Franco-Canadian collection”, they cover several periods of creation. With oils and gouache from the 1950s and 1960s, collages from the 1960s and bronzes from the series Famine from 1970.

There is a very beautiful pastel and charcoal on paper, The kings of Thule, from 1973, beautifully lit. And a surprising Untitled, Around Rosafrom 1992, which is one of the works created as part of The tribute to Rosa Luxemburg. The artist did not keep it for the monumental work that can be admired at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec. Happy Parisian visits…. in the footsteps of Riopelle!