Jean-Paul RiopelleLances

Jean-Paul Riopelle, who as a young man had been influenced by Surrealism, had been one of the artists behind the Canadian "Refus global" (Global refusal), a manifesto against the establishment and religion, against academic education for artists, and for non-figurative painting.

Riopelle went to Paris on a Canadian government fellowship in 1945 and then in 1946 to New York, where his work was included in the International Surrealist Exhibition. By the time the "Refus global" was published in 1948, Riopelle was back in Paris, he had been living there for a year and had become part of the ecole de Paris. His expressive abstract paintings were executed in pure colours straight from the tube, sometimes over several canvases.

From the late 1950s on, he lived near Giverny with the American painter Joan Mitchell, who had come to Paris in 1955. In 1958, the year the present work was created, Riopelle received an honorable mention for the Guggenheim International Award for the second time (after 1956).