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 among the celebrated Quebecois modernist’s most outstanding collectors, extolled the late painter as one among “Canada’s biggest inventive 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 beneath 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 group isn’t immune. That sentiment helped sweep the Liberal get together 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 Effective Artwork Public sale Home, referring to the widespread adoption of a hockey phrase to precise patriotism, “it’s ‘paddles up’.”
Heffel says the nation’s main public sale home has had a banner few months by way of gross sales of Canadian artwork. “Our on-line gross sales of Canadian artwork had been greater in January than they’ve been since 2000,” he says, noting that the patrons should not all home shoppers. “Many international patrons—together with Individuals and expat Canadians—are attracted by the weaker Canadian greenback.”
Works by Riopelle are notably wanted proper now, in accordance with Heffel. “The largest influence on the Riopelle market is the dimensions of bequests going to the brand new Riopelle centre in Quebec,” he says.
Current 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 likely be faraway from the marketplace for perpetuity, so…for the subsequent era of collectors, it’s going to be virtually inconceivable to get a serious museum-calibre Riopelle,” he says.
In response to 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 laborious now for a collector to accumulate an Emily Carr,” he says.
Mirroring the broader financial development in direction of interprovincial commerce within the face of US tariffs, there was a concomitant enhance in interprovincial artwork shopping for. “The marketplace for Canadian artwork is certainly 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 example. “In 1980 one bought for C$50,000 and now it could 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 certain quantity 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 change between the Anglophone and Francophone components of Canada has been minimal—within the nationwide artwork group. And whereas the ruling Liberal get together has but to roll out a coverage similar 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.
