Forest Blizzard

Abstract Expressionist painter Jean-Paul Riopelle was among the first Canadian artists to achieve international fame and recognition. Born in 1923, he studied at the École des Beaux Arts and the École de Meuble during the 1940s. He trained under Paul Émile Borduas, a founding figure of Les Automatistes, a group adjacent to the Surrealists that rebuked establishment, tradition and religious authority, favoring instead the subconscious as the driving force behind nonfigurative painting. He traveled to New York and Paris after the end of World War II, where his works were included alongside the leading Surrealists artists in several of the Expositions Internationale du Surrealisme.