On the opening of Riopelle: Crossroads in Time on the Vancouver Artwork Gallery in mid-March, the philanthropist Michael Audain, who chairs the Jean Paul Riopelle Basis and is without doubt one of the celebrated Quebecois modernist’s most outstanding collectors, extolled the late painter as one in every of “Canada’s biggest creative heroes”. After acknowledging the presence of Jean-Luc Murray, the director basic of the Musée Nationwide des Beaux-Arts du Québec—the place a complete new wing devoted to Riopelle is underneath development—Audain ended his speech with a rousing “Vive le Canada” and a fist pump.
Shows of nationalism have lengthy been unusual in Canada—besides maybe at hockey video games—however as Canadians reeled from US President Donald Trump’s commerce struggle and threats of annexation, a wave of patriotism has swept the nation. And its artwork neighborhood shouldn’t be immune. That sentiment helped sweep the Liberal occasion and Mark Carney to a decisive victory on this week’s nationwide election, though they didn’t obtain sufficient votes to have a majority in parliament.
“As a substitute of ‘elbows up’,” says David Heffel, the president of Heffel Tremendous Artwork Public sale Home, referring to the widespread adoption of a hockey phrase to specific patriotism, “it’s ‘paddles up’.”
Heffel says the nation’s main public sale home has had a banner few months when it comes to gross sales of Canadian artwork. “Our on-line gross sales of Canadian artwork had been larger in January than they’ve been since 2000,” he says, noting that the consumers aren’t all home purchasers. “Many overseas consumers—together with People and expat Canadians—are attracted by the weaker Canadian greenback.”
Works by Riopelle are significantly wanted proper now, in accordance with Heffel. “The most important affect on the Riopelle market is the scale of bequests going to the brand new Riopelle centre in Quebec,” he says.
Latest items of the artist’s work by each Audain and the mining entrepreneur and philanthropist Pierre Lassonde, Heffel says, have created a vacuum out there. “These works will probably be faraway from the marketplace for perpetuity, so…for the following technology of collectors, it’s going to be nearly unattainable to get a significant museum-calibre Riopelle,” he says.
Based on Heffel, the same phenomenon occurred with the work of one other revered Canadian modernist, Emily Carr, when the Emily Carr Trusttook greater than 300 works off the market indefinitely. “It’s very exhausting now for a collector to accumulate an Emily Carr,” he says.
Mirroring the broader financial pattern in the direction of interprovincial commerce within the face of US tariffs, there was a concomitant improve in interprovincial artwork shopping for. “The marketplace for Canadian artwork is unquestionably rising,” says Felix Tetu, a Quebecois collector who owns six works by Riopelle and flew to Vancouver for the exhibition opening. He cites Riopelle’s Iceberg sequence for instance. “In 1980 one offered for C$50,000 and now it will be price C$5m.”
Dissolving ‘les deux solitudes’
Jean Paul Riopelle, Chicago II, 1958 Courtesy of MNBAQ, switch in favor of a particular contribution of the Ministère de la Tradition et des Communications du Québec (2001.154), © Succession Jean Paul Riopelle/CARCC Ottawa 2025, Photograph: Idra Labrie, Courtesy of MNBAQ
Tetu credit the Riopelle Basis for its efforts to advertise the artist’s work round his centennial in autumn 2023, but additionally sees a specific amount of patriotism at play. As a proud Quebecois and Riopelle collector, Tetu says he likes to gather artwork by artists from his dwelling province. “I purchase it as a result of it pleases me,” he says.
Whereas Riopelle is well-known in Quebec and France, he has historically had a decrease profile in English Canada. However the Riopelle Basis’s latest promotion of his work, and Crossroads in Time’s journey from exhibiting on the Nationwide Gallery of Canada in Ottawa to the Winnipeg Artwork Gallery and now the Vancouver Artwork Gallery, are altering that.
The present nationalist second has accelerated the dissolution of les deux solitudes—a historic dynamic whereby alternate between the Anglophone and Francophone elements of Canada has been minimal—within the nationwide artwork neighborhood. And whereas the ruling Liberal occasion has but to roll out a coverage corresponding to its pandemic-era dedication to supporting arts and tradition, with Carney pledging to inject C$150m into the beleaguered CBC, there are some encouraging indicators of life on the Canadian cultural panorama.
