Jean-Paul Riopelle was a Canadian Abstract Expressionist best known for his non-representational landscape paintings. Riopelle squeezed paint straight from the tube and applied it liberally with a palette knife to craft his mosaic-like works. “When I begin a painting I always hope to complete it in a few strokes, starting with the first colors I daub down anywhere and anyhow,” he once said of his practice. “But it never works, so I add more, without realizing it.” Born on October 7, 1923 in Montreal, Canada, Riopelle studied at both the École des Beaux-Arts and the École de Meuble in his hometown during the 1940s. His instructor, Paul Émile Borduas, had been a founding member of Les Automatistes...