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 best inventive heroes”. After acknowledging the presence of Jean-Luc Murray, the director normal of the Musée Nationwide des Beaux-Arts du Québec—the place an entire new wing devoted to Riopelle is below building—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 battle and threats of annexation, a wave of patriotism has swept the nation. And its artwork group just isn’t 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 Effective 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 have been larger in January than they’ve been since 2000,” he says, noting that the patrons aren’t all home purchasers. “Many international patrons—together with People and expat Canadians—are attracted by the weaker Canadian greenback.”
Works by Riopelle are significantly wanted proper now, based on Heffel. “The largest affect on the Riopelle market is the dimensions of bequests going to the brand new Riopelle centre in Quebec,” he says.
Latest presents 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 can be faraway from the marketplace for perpetuity, so…for the subsequent era of collectors, it’s going to be nearly unimaginable to get a significant museum-calibre Riopelle,” he says.
In accordance with Heffel, an identical 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 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 collection 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 in addition 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 residence 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 current 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 trade between the Anglophone and Francophone elements of Canada has been minimal—within the nationwide artwork group. And whereas the ruling Liberal occasion has but to roll out a coverage akin 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.
