Sold for: $21,250

PROVENANCE
Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Acquavella Modern Art, Nevada
Galerie Roger Bellemare, Montreal
Private Collection, Montreal
Sold sale of Post-War & Contemporary Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 23, 2016, lot 52
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Yseult Riopelle, Jean Paul Riopelle Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 3, 1960 – 1965, 2009, pages 58 - 59, reproduced page 267, catalogue #1962.012P.1962

The 1960s were an important decade in Jean Paul Riopelle’s oeuvre, and it was a period during which he expanded his painterly techniques and experimented further with mediums. He worked with ink, gouache, pastel, engraving, collage and sculpture. His early 1960s works on paper are characterized by complex networks of calligraphic black lines hovering over a pale backdrop. Sans titre is a fine example of such works, with its background made of softly modulated areas of white and grey, punctuated by touches of crimson and magenta. Art historian Yves Michaud wrote: “The coloured inks and gouaches, whose fluidity is used to produce dripping and scratching, form a link with the Tachiste past of the 1950s. They play on the immateriality of the colour and on the blacks that allow scratching, sweeps and grids. From this point of view, these inks and gouaches follow the same procedure as the oil paintings, which gradually reintroduce an overall structure in the midst of the marks of coloured impasto.” Such experimentation allowed Riopelle to continually renew his approach to abstraction, which set him apart from both French and American artistic movements.

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