Jean-Paul Riopelle

The Choice of Painting

Tessé Museum, Le Mans

The Tessé Museum is presenting the exhibition “The Choice of Painting, Another History of Abstraction, 1962-1989” from February 10th to June 9th, 2024. It offers a panorama of three decades of abstract painting in France, from the 1960s to the 1980s.

How did artists kept on painting when the trend, starting from the 1960s, gazed towards pop art, non-art, conceptual art, or minimalism? Through about sixty works, the exhibition explores this interrogation by reflecting the diversity of new pictorial approaches based on a different conception of gesture, the role of colour, and the notion of painting.

Victor Vanoosten, exhibition curator

Musée de Tessé
2 avenue de Paderborn
72000 Le Mans

Free Admission
Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Catalogue: THE CHOICE OF PAINTING Another history of abstraction in France 1962-1989.

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Jean Paul Riopelle | Essence of studios

The Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul de Vence

At the heart of Abstraction Works from the collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art

Fondation Maeght

The exhibition at the Fondation Maeght will show works from the collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art from the 2nd of July until the 20th of November 2022 and offers an immersion in the vibrant creation of the years 1945 to 1980.

Home to a collection of more than 13,000 works, Fondation Maeght is always keen and honoured to showcase other collections, some of which are rarely accessible to the public, as it has consistently done in the past. This summer, from 2 July to 20 November, it is unveiling some 120 works from the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art (Geneva) and offering a riveting immersion into abstraction from the 1950s to the 1980s.

In the wake of Second World War, as many European artists exiled in the United States headed back to France, Paris regained its status as a hotbed of creativity and a global cultural capital. Driven by a thirst for freedom and a craving to rethink painting in the post-war years, artists from all over the world returned to their studios, abandoned during the German occupation, and engaged in an era of creative effervescence, be it in the arts, literature or filmmaking. While the breakthroughs by the vanguards of the first half of the 20th century were an invaluable post-war stimulus, abstract art renewed itself from the most gestural expression to the interrogation of materials, mediums and techniques.

The Fondation Gandur pour l’Art’s outstanding collection displayed at Fondation Maeght reveals the variety of forms em- braced by abstraction during these creative years. Works by Hans Hartung, Martin Barré, Simon Hantaï or Pierre Soulag- es trace the evolution of non-figurative art over four decades. In a thematic and chronological layout, the exhibition invites the viewer to discover lyrical and gestural abstraction by Georges Mathieu, abstract expressionism by Sam Francis and Joan Mitchell, geometric abstraction by Victor Vasarely, kinetic works by Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguely, through to the rethinking of painting by the Supports/Surfaces group. The 1980s ushered in an era of revitalized abstract art, building on the hectic experimentation of earlier years.

Guest curator: Yan Schubert, the Gandur Collection pour l’Art curato

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Pierre Matisse, an Art Dealer in New York

Musée Matisse Nice

Curated by:
Claudine Grammont

Hosting a large exhibition devoted to Pierre Matisse, the Musée Matisse revisits the exceptional career of Henri Matisse’s youngest son, a New York art dealer and a key figure of the 20^th century art world.

For about sixty years, the Pierre Matisse Gallery played a prominent role in the art world: it tirelessly championed French and European modern art in the United States during a key period which saw the formation of major private and institutional American collections. The 300 or so exhibitions organised at the gallery allowed a generation of European artists to gain visibility and take part in the New York art scene.

Pierre Matisse applied himself to build his artists’ reputation and promote the American careers of major figures represented by the gallery: Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Balthus, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Dubuffet and Marc Chagall to name but a few. He supported individuals rather than movements like fauvism, cubism, surrealism or the School of Paris. Without claiming to be exhaustive, the exhibition Pierre Matisse, an Art Dealer in New York retraces this odyssey through the presentation of seventy artworks by twenty-three key artists of the gallery.

As underlined by Balthus, Pierre “saw things as a painter’s son”. The exhibition puts strong emphasis on the gallery’s publications as they testify to Pierre’s remarkable creative skill at designing these sometimes modest yet original publications. It also shows, through numerous installation views of the gallery that he curated and hung his exhibitions with great care too.

These two themes which are documented by a wealth of images of the gallery’s publications and exhibits are central to both the exhibition and the catalogue. The latter, published by Bernard Chauveau, brings together essays by Serena Bucalo-Mussely, Catherine Dossin, Fabrice Flahutez, Jack Flam, Claudine Grammont, Marianne Jakobi and Johanne Lindskog.

The exhibition includes major loans from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (New York), the Ezra and David Nahmad collection and private collections. 15 masterpieces, donated in lieu of inheritance tax by Pierre Matisse’s heirs to the French state in 1991 and kept in the Musée national d’art moderne’s collection, have been generously loaned to the Musée Matisse, paving the way for a multiyear partnership agreement signed by the City of Nice and the Centre Georges Pompidou.

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UNITED STATES OF ABSTRACTION

Musée d'arts de Nantes | Musée Fabre Montpellier

The exhibition United States of Abstraction. American Artists in France, 1946-1964 explores the intense presence of American artists and how they helped redefine abstract art in France at a time when the global geography of art was in upheaval. It is generally considered that Paris lost its status as the art capital of the world after the Second World War, in favour of New York. However, from the end of the war, many artists, musicians and writers came to study and create in France. The exhibition explores the intense presence of these American artists and how they helped redefine abstract art in France at a time when the global geography of art was being turned upside down.

The exhibition is made up of about a hundred works, paintings and sculptures, from public and private collections in Europe and the United States, and is accompanied by numerous documents that provide an insight into the period.

This exhibition is organised in collaboration with the Fabre Museum of Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole which will host it from 6 August to 31 October 2021.

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes – read more

Musée Fabre, Montpellier – read more

Jean-Paul Riopelle : Catalogue raisonné tome 5, 1972 – 1979

Yseult Riopelle, Fondation Riopelle

Texte de Ray Ellenwood : Masks, the North and New Configurations – Les masques, le Grand Nord et les nouvelles configurations, 2017, suivi de Addendum: The Question of Cultural Appropriation – Addenda: La question de l’appropriation culturelle, mars 2019

Recherche et direction Yseult Riopelle et Tanguy Riopelle

Français/anglais. Plus de 1300 reproductions – 552 pages.

ISBN : 978-2-922623-04-8

Riopelle, the call of northern landscapes and indigenous cultures

Musée des Beaux-arts de Montréal

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is dedicating a major exhibition to Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002), a towering figure in Canadian, Quebec and international modern art. Based on original research, the exhibition explores, the artist’s interest in the North and Indigenous cultures, with nearly 160 works and more than 150 artifacts and archival documents. It sheds new light on the artist’s work during the 1950s and 1970s by retracing the travels and influences that fed his fascination with northern regions and North American Indigenous communities.

The exhibition Riopelle: The Call of Northern Landscapes and Indigenous Cultures reveals an artist imbued with a Surrealist’ interest in non-Western art, as inspired by his friend and collector Georges Duthuit and the writings of anthropologists and ethnologists, such as Marius Barbeau, Jean Malaurie and Claude Lévi-Strauss.

It explores the influence of Riopelle’s hunting and fishing trips with Dr. Champlain Charest by seaplane to Quebec and Canada’s North and Far North during the 1970s, as evidenced in the series Jeux de ficelles (1971-1972), Rois de Thulé (1973) and Icebergs (1977). Using an intercultural approach, the exhibition offers a parallel between Riopelle’s works and some of the sources that inspired him, in particular a selection of Inuit masks and works of Pacific Northwest coast First Nations.

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MITCHELL/RIOPELLE UN COUPLE DANS LA DÉMESURE

FONDS HÉLÈNE & ÉDOUARD LECLERC POUR LA CULTURE

Figures incontournables de la peinture abstraite de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, la peintre américaine Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) et le peintre canadien Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923-2002) s’inscrivent, à l’image de Camille Claudel et Auguste Rodin, de Lee Miller et Man Ray, de Frida Kahlo et Diego Rivera, de Lee Krasner et Jackson Pollock, dans la constellation des mythologies sentimentales et artistiques, où se révèle toute la portée d’un lien affectif étroit entre deux créateurs passionnés et audacieux. Pour la toute première fois, une exposition retrace leur carrière artistique respective à l’aune de leur relation, à compter de leur rencontre en 1955, jusqu’à leur séparation en 1979. Des œuvres emblématiques et principalement de grand format, fruits de leur travail réalisé dans le contexte particulier de cette liaison, seront présentées à Landerneau.

COMMISSARIAT : MICHEL MARTIN

L’exposition Mitchell | Riopelle. Un couple dans la démesure a été conçue par le Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec et réalisée en collaboration avec le Musée des beaux-arts de l’Ontario et le Fonds Hélène & Édouard Leclerc pour la Culture. Cette réunion inédite d’une soixantaine d’œuvres majeures de ces deux géants de l’art moderne a été présenté pour la toute première fois au Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec en 2017, puis au Musée des beaux-arts de l’Ontario de Toronto en 2018. L’exposition réunit principalement des tableaux de grand format et quelques œuvres sur papier, en provenance de plus d’une trentaine de prêteurs, de collections privées et muséales, françaises, canadiennes et américaines. Ce projet a été réalisé avec le précieux soutien de la Joan Mitchell Foundation (New York) et d’Yseult Riopelle et Sylvie Riopelle. Le partenariat établi avec le FHEL pour une troisième présentation de cette exposition, en France, permet à ce projet de s’épanouir dans un nouveau lien, en écho avec l’attachement et l’intérêt de ces artistes pour ce pays.

Lien vers l’exposition

MITCHELL/RIOPELLE, NOTHING IN MODERATION

Musée des Beaux-arts de du Québec

A CELEBRATION OF TWO GIANT PRACTITIONERS OF MODERNITY

Some 60 majors works have been assembled to examine their respective artistic careers in terms of their relationship, from their first meeting in 1955 until their separation in 1979. Designed by the MNBAQ and organized in partnership with the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), supported by the Joan Mitchell Foundation in New York and the Estate of Jean-Paul Riopelle in Montréal, the exhibition mainly presents large-format paintings, a number of works on paper and archival documents from more than 30 French, Canadian and American lenders, private and museum collections. The presentation explores how the two artists, who shared their lives for nearly 25 years, in Paris, then in Vétheuil in the Seine valley, developed a studio practice and a distinctive body of work while sustaining a broad dialogue focusing on abstraction. Their tastes for the impressionist heritage, nature and a form of provocation certainly drew them together. Their deeply singular conception of painting and work methods were entirely shaped by their romantic relationship.

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