Jean-Paul Riopelle 1952 "Quinze Chevaux Citroen"

Acquavella Galleries presents a show of Jean-Paul Riopelle’s large-scale paintings, dating from the 1950s to the 1970s. The show runs Sept. 17 to Oct. 23.

Riopelle, a Canadian-born painter who moved to Paris in 1946, first achieved fame in the 1950s when he won important international prizes and exhibited in back-to-back Venice Biennales.

More recently he has been out of favor among critics.

The New York Times’ Roberta Smith lumped him among “misguided” artists in a review of a Guggenheim show earlier this year. In 2005, the Times Ken Johnson suggested Riopelle would appear “pretty weak” compared with the best work of his romantic companion, the American Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell.

Perhaps the fuller showing at Acquavella will help renew enthusiasm.  Riopelle died in 2002.

During his lifetime he exhibited at the Upper East Side Pierre Matisse Gallery.  William Acquavella teamed up with Sotheby’s to purchase approximately 2,300 artworks in the Matisse inventory in 1990 for $143 million, a year after the dealer died.