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Lot Essay
"However far you may go, however high you may climb, you must begin with a single step. Thus the Single Stroke of the Paintbrush encompasses everything - right up to the outmost reaches of the faraway. And amongst ten thousand million strokes of the paintbrush, there is not one where the begninng and the end do not ultimately reside in this Single Stroke of the Paintbrush whose control belongs to man alone." (Shitao, 18th Century Chinese master of calligraphy writing in 'Les Propos sur la peinture du moine Citrouille-amre', Hermann 1984)
Shimmering like some dense and brilliantly coloured jungle foliage that has suddenly become animated, this large and spectacular painting is one of the finest examples of Riopelle's art from his important breakthrough period in 1952.
Methodically built up in layers of bright colour that have been applied with thousands of excited strokes of a palette knife, Riopelle has allowed the application of his paint to mix and blend into striations of coloured form that all vie with one another for attention. In addition, in a move that has inevitably encouraged comparison with his American counterpart Jackson Pollock, Riopelle has extended and articulated his striated daubs of colour by dripping his paint in fluid fibre-like lines over the already heavily painted surface.
Darting and sparkling like flashes of light or bolts of energy these web-like fibres animate the surface so that it takes on the appearance of a vibrant constellation or the volatile volcanic skin of a particularly active planet. Yet the intensity of activity in this work has been ahieved by a progressive build up that is actually a representation of Riopelle's struggle to find the single dynamic brushstroke that is the sum of what these many thousands of strokes convey in conjunction with one another. "When I begin a painting," Riopelle observed, "I always hope to complete it in a few strokes, starting with the first colours I daub down anywhere and anyhow. But it never works so I add, more, and more, without realising it I have never wanted to paint thickly, paint tubes are much too expensive. But one way or another the painting has to be done." (cited in Y. Riopelle, Jean-Paul Riopelle 1939-53, Montreal 1999, p. 46)
Shimmering like some dense and brilliantly coloured jungle foliage that has suddenly become animated, this large and spectacular painting is one of the finest examples of Riopelle's art from his important breakthrough period in 1952.
Methodically built up in layers of bright colour that have been applied with thousands of excited strokes of a palette knife, Riopelle has allowed the application of his paint to mix and blend into striations of coloured form that all vie with one another for attention. In addition, in a move that has inevitably encouraged comparison with his American counterpart Jackson Pollock, Riopelle has extended and articulated his striated daubs of colour by dripping his paint in fluid fibre-like lines over the already heavily painted surface.
Darting and sparkling like flashes of light or bolts of energy these web-like fibres animate the surface so that it takes on the appearance of a vibrant constellation or the volatile volcanic skin of a particularly active planet. Yet the intensity of activity in this work has been ahieved by a progressive build up that is actually a representation of Riopelle's struggle to find the single dynamic brushstroke that is the sum of what these many thousands of strokes convey in conjunction with one another. "When I begin a painting," Riopelle observed, "I always hope to complete it in a few strokes, starting with the first colours I daub down anywhere and anyhow. But it never works so I add, more, and more, without realising it I have never wanted to paint thickly, paint tubes are much too expensive. But one way or another the painting has to be done." (cited in Y. Riopelle, Jean-Paul Riopelle 1939-53, Montreal 1999, p. 46)