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LOT 022

AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 - 2002
Canadian

Sans titre
oil on paper on canvas
signed and dated 1958 and on verso signed, inscribed "59008", "G Page" (indistinctly) / "G" / "2 DAR"/ "24/1/59" / "345" and stamped Brera and with the customs stamp
30 1/2 x 41 3/4 in, 77.5 x 106 cm

Estimate: $30,000 - $50,000 CAD

Sold for: $73,250

Preview at: Heffel Toronto – 13 Hazelton Ave

PROVENANCE
Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris
Galleria dell'Ariete, Milan
Sold sale of Fraser Brothers Ltd. Auctioneers, Montreal
Private Collection, Quebec

LITERATURE
Yseult Riopelle, Jean Paul Riopelle Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 2, 1954 - 1959, 2004, reproduced page 400, catalogue #1958.044P.1958

EXHIBITED
Galleria dell'Ariete, Milan, 1959
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 1970


Jean Paul Riopelle’s works on paper from the late 1950s are distinct from the mosaic canvases he was producing during this period. In this work, Riopelle has discarded the densely tessellated forms of the palette knife for the wide, emphatic strokes of the brush. Spatially, the work is much looser and less restrained: greys, blues and greens are washed over bare paper, while opaque, emphatically flat strokes take on calligraphic twists. Riopelle was deeply inspired by Indigenous cultures at this time, having been exposed to the writings and collections of artists, anthropologists and historians who were interested in the Indigenous artists of the Arctic and the Northwest Coast. While not explicitly titled, this work bears the clear formal influence of the objects, masks, and totem poles Riopelle would have seen: the marginal outward thrust of the work echoes the asymmetric juts and protrusions of transformation masks, while the energetic gestural marks recall the inscribed and painted faces and animals that decorate them.

Riopelle’s Indigenous-inspired works have recently been re-evaluated in the exhibition Riopelle: The Call of Northern Landscapes and Indigenous Cultures, which featured similar contemporaneous gouaches. This exhibition, which originated at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, will travel in 2021 to 2022 to the Audain Art Museum, Whistler, the Glenbow Museum, Calgary and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton.


Estimate: $30,000 - $50,000 CAD

All prices are in Canadian Dollars


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