Jean-Paul Riopelle was born in Montreal, Quebec, and from an early age showed artistic talent. At the age of 10 he began taking art lessons from Henri Bisson, a local artist and teacher, and later studied at the Ecole du Meuble de Montreal 1943-45. From there he moved to Paris where he became friends with Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miro and Samuel Beckett.

Like many of his contemporary mid-century abstractionists, he was influenced by the Surrealist idea of automatism, (the state of acting involuntarily) which he incorporated into his early works. In 1947 Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp invited him to exhibit in a Surrealist show and he soon became affiliated with the postwar School of Paris painters. His heavily impastoed, expressionistic compositions helped him gain international recognition and he was included in the Venice Biennale in 1952 where he was awarded the Unesco Prize. He was the first Canadian painter to receive this honour, and returned to capture awards again in 1954 and 1962.

Riopelle lived just outside Paris from the 1950’s until 1979 and exhibited across Europe and North America showing regularly with the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York City. He used a palette knife to texture his canvases later in his career and always worked vibrantly and passionately, blending colour and movement in a mezmerizing composition of sub-conscience reflection. He continued to live abroad until the early 1990’s when he permanently returned to Canada. He died on the lie aux Grues, near Quebec City at the age of seventy-eight, leaving behind a legacy as one of the most renowned Canadian artists of the 20th century.