Composition, 1958

Private Collection, Toronto

The 1950s brought much success for Jean Paul Riopelle due to increased contact with prominent members of the New York School and the international art scene. Riopelle met the American painter Joan Mitchell in Paris during the summer of 1955. The two artists swiftly entered a romantic relationship that endured for nearly twenty-five years. Riopelle had recently shown his work twice at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York in 1955, first in May and then in December. Mitchell may have attended the second exhibition, as she had returned to America shortly after meeting Riopelle and was working at her studio in St. Mark’s Place, New York. Despite the distance, the two artists maintained correspondence. In a letter to Mitchell dated January 10, 1956, Riopelle shared that he was experiencing a shortage of inspiration in oils and was instead painting in gouache. "Composition" was painted in 1958, during the early years of Riopelle and Mitchell’s romance. Executed in oil on paper mounted on canvas, the work bears similarities to his experimental gouaches of the time. The delicate, overlapping layers of paint with exposed ground recall the the effects of gouache and create a stark contrast to the thick impasto of his mosaics.