D’avantage d’oiseaux, 1967

Galerie Maeght, Paris Private Collection, Toronto

“Riopelle, Assemblages”, Galerie Maeght, Paris, 1967, Derrière le miroir no. 171, no. 21 “Jean Paul Riopelle, Assemblages, New Lithographs”, Albert White Gallery, Toronto, 1968

Yseult Riopelle, “Jean Paul Riopelle: Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 4, 1966-1971”, Montreal, 2014, reproduced page 259, catalogue no. 1967.011P.1967 François-Marc Gagnon, “Jean Paul Riopelle: Life & Work” [online publication], Art Canada Institute, Toronto, 2019, page 69

Jean Paul Riopelle’s first encounter with printmaking was in 1946 when he visited New York. There, he visited the studio of William Hayter and met fellow artists such as Joan Miró and Franz Kline. Nearly twenty years later, Riopelle and Joan Mitchell spent time in Vétheuil, a village outside of Paris, where Monet lived from 1878 to 1881. It was during this period when Riopelle began to rediscover the medium. The artist travelled back and forth between Vétheuil and Paris almost daily, frequenting the Imprimerie Arte-Adrien Maeght, a printmaking studio. If not completely satisfied with a print, he cleverly repurposed the work by cutting it into pieces and making a collage. This new series of compositions were large in scale and dated to 1967, including “D’avantage d’oiseaux”. François-Marc Gagnon comments on Riopelle’s collages of this period, describing them as “complex and anarchic patterns reminiscent of his early abstractions. In them, fine line is accentuated by larger and smaller cut up abstraction prints, arranged in a haphazard fashion that shows little regard for the way an image should look. His collage work, grounded in printmaking, is an exploration of potential abstract arrangements that celebrate the chance encounter that occurs when pieces never intended to share the same space are brought into contact with one another.” The renowned Galerie Maeght and the Imprimerie Arte-Adrien Maeght were owned by Adrien Maeght, a prominent Parisian art dealer known for exhibiting works of famous modern and contemporary artists. Mr. Maeght had included Riopelle’s early abstractions in a landmark 1947 surrealist exhibition with André Breton and Marcel Duchamp. “D’avantage d’oiseaux” bears an original Galerie Maeght label on the canvas stretcher, indicating that the artwork would have been created at the print studio and then exhibited at the gallery.