Jean Paul Riopelle

Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923-2002), painter, sculptor and engraver is recognized as the greatest Canadian artist and a master of abstraction of the 1950s. His work has always oscillated between pure abstraction and a search for reality. His final work represents the accomplishment of this quest. Isolated by illness in his studio in Saint-Cyr-en-Arthies, Riopelle created his last paintings between 1989 and 1992. Charged with emotion and a striking chromatic richness, these innovative works push the artist to leave a true artistic testament, defying death with an almost insolent audacity. He experiments with stencil techniques and spray paint applications, giving birth to works imbued with shamanic symbolism. These last paintings, bathed in an atmosphere of macabre celebration, reveal mysterious objects that the poet Michel Waldberg tries to decipher in his preface, seeking to understand their deep meanings:

"Among the elements of the painter's personal iconography are the chain(s) (from which one must free oneself, but which also connect the worlds), the grid that indicates the passage from one state to another, and filters impurity, the horseshoe and the nail. Regarding iron, let us recall that one of the most operative shamanic symbols is precisely the horse. "A funerary animal and psychopomp par excellence, [it] is used by the shaman in different contexts, as a means of obtaining ecstasy, that is to say the "exit from oneself" that makes the mystical journey possible." The nail is perhaps the object used to shoe the said animal. But I suspect that Riopelle, as a "depressionist" that he flattered himself to be, did not fail to think of the expression "Nails!", a manifestation of impatience and refusal.