Galerie Riehentar, Bâle, Switzerland
Galerie de Bellefeuille, Montreal
Private Collection, Ontario
Exhibited
Galerie Riehentar, Bâle, Switzerland, 1959
Literature
Yseult Riopelle, "Jean Paul Riopelle: Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 2, 1954-1958," Montreal, 2004, reproduced page 399, catalogue no. 1958.038P.1958
François-Marc Gagnon, "Jean Paul Riopelle: Life & Work" [online publication], Art Canada Institute, Toronto, 2019, page 15
Jean Paul Riopelle’s involvement with Lyrical Abstraction in the 1950s proved to be much more valuable to him than his brief time with the Surrealists. He explored a multitude of ways to consider abstract art without relying on the dominant Mondrian-style geometricism or any other prescriptive formula. The palette knife added an element of chance to Riopelle’s mosaic works. He piled on various coloured pigments, and each time the paint was pushed across the canvas, the colours formed a different and unique outcome. François-Marc Gagnon points out that much earlier in the painter’s career, Riopelle had called for “hasard total,” or “absolute chance,” as the basis for a work of art, likely foreshadowing the direction he would take in his mature works. Dating to 1958, during the height of Riopelle’s experimental career and several years into his renowned “mosaic” series, "Sans titre" embodies this spontaneous arrangement of colours that is created with the palette knife. By 1960, the artist used the palette knife in new ways, creating more varied compositions with sinuous lines and bands in different widths. "Sans titre", with its many spontaneous swoops of black paint, is perhaps foreshadowing this stylistic shift away from the very structured mosaics.
