Canadian painter and sculptor. He started painting and drawing naturalistic landscapes at an early age. Between 1939 and 1941, he studied at Montreal Polytechnic whilst doing a correspondence course in Architecture. In 1941, he temporarily gave up painting and, between 1943 and 1945, studied at the Montreal Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Riopelle and other artists in the same current, later known as automatists, frequently met at the studio of Paul-Emile Borduas to discuss their ideas and their interest in Abstract Art, Surrealism and Automatism techniques. He visited Paris for the first time in 1946, where he settled the following year. He was included by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp in the last collective exhibition of the Surrealist movement at the Maeght Gallery in Paris. It was in this city that he had the opportunity of mixing with artists like Georges Mathieu, Maria Elena Vieira da Silva, Nicolas de Stael and other Abstract painters of the School of Paris. After having stopped painting in 1955, Riopelle abandoned the mosaic formula, using a manipulation of the most varied paint. As from the end of the 50s, his works were no longer exclusively abstracts but had representations of landscapes and animals as a starting point. In 1951 and 1955, he took part in the S‹o Paulo Biennale and, in 1954, at the Venice Biennale. In 1958, also began modelling sculptures in cast bronze, which he exhibited for the first time in 1962. In 1959 and 1964, he took part in documenta 2 and 3 in Kassel and, in 1962, he received the UNESCO prize for art. After the mid 60s, Riopelle broadened his range of techniques and materials: sculpture, pastel, lithography, collage, enamel, acrylic and mosaic. After 1970, he spent a large part of his time in Quebec. In 1972, he had a one-man show at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and, in 1981, a retrospective at the Musée National d'Art Moderne also in Paris.
