Yseult Riopelle received the insignia from the hands of the French Ambassador to Canada, Michel Miraillet, who highlighted her remarkable career in various artistic activities. During her career, the daughter of Jean Paul Riopelle and Françoise Riopelle has excelled in the fields of dance, jewelry, sculpture, ceramics and curating exhibitions, devoting decades to research and dissemination of his father’s work.
Very active at the moment as we celebrate, in Canada and in France, the centenary of Riopelle’s birth, Yseult Riopelle thanked France for this honor bestowed on her, on behalf of “the land of welcome of so many of artists with a plural personality”. She praised France for its mission “to defend the freedom to create”. This allows, she added, artists to express “the immensity of the imagination of the human spirit. »
Yseult Riopelle also thanked Michael Audain, the Vancouver collector and patron, adorer of Riopelle’s work, for having taken the initiative to create the Jean Paul Riopelle Foundation, which will notably lead to the creation of the Espace Riopelle at National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec, in the Old Capital. Moved, she then said to The Press that this award and the speeches that preceded his “made him want to recreate”.
The tribute was paid in the presence of many personalities, Senator Serge Joyal, the director general of the MMFA, Stéphane Aquin, the painter and signatory of Refus global, Françoise Sullivan, the gallery owner Simon Blais, the director of the Riopelle Foundation, Manon Gauthier, producer Denyse Robert, director of the Galerie de l’UQAM, Louise Déry, curators Sylvie Lacerte, Gilles Daigneault and Claude Gosselin, and collector Laurent Duvernay-Tardif.