Sold for: $112,100

PROVENANCE
Galerie Maeght, Paris
Private Collection, Montreal

LITERATURE
Thomas B. Hess, Derrière le miroir, Riopelle: Icebergs, Galerie Maeght, 1979, reproduced, unpaginated
Canadian Post-War & Contemporary Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 28, 2013, essay by Mark Cheetham, page 29

EXHIBITED
Galerie Maeght, Paris, Riopelle: Icebergs, 1979

Jean Paul Riopelle traveled to the Canadian Arctic in 1977 and began work on a series of Iceberg paintings shortly afterwards. Most of Riopelle’s Iceberg works were executed with a limited colour palette of black and white, which strikes us immediately here. Unlike many of Riopelle’s Sans titre works, the titles of the Iceberg paintings convey an idea of figuration, a hint at supposed subject matter. But the bold forms created by his palette knife are not representational; rather the work can be read as an abstracted landscape. As Mark Cheetham wrote in his essay on Iceberg IV, sold by Heffel in 2013, “The genius of the Icebergs is that they extend Riopelle’s lifelong conversation between European modernism and his home, and between abstraction and figuration. The series evokes both natural forces and the artist’s ongoing connections to avant-garde European painting. The Icebergs are figurative, though in a way closely allied to his longstanding abstract practices.” Iceberg no. 25 is a superlative example from this unique series by one of Canada’s most talented abstract painters.

This work will be included in Yseult Riopelle's forthcoming Volume 5 of the catalogue raisonné on the artist's work.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars