The Musée d’art de Rouyn-Noranda is proud to bring together works by two centenarian artists: Jean-Paul Riopelle and Rose-Aimée Bélanger. Both born in 1923, their fates were very different.
Rose-Aimée Bélanger, born in Quebec’s Témiscamingue region, began her artistic career in her fifties, after raising a family of nine children in Ontario’s Témiscamingue region. Forty years later, the sculptor has almost a thousand works to her credit. At first, she fixed in clay the people around her, and responded to commissions by creating sculptures inspired by the mining trades. She then freed herself by creating the “Rondes”. Cast in bronze, the Rondes immortalize the small pleasures of everyday life. Defying today’s canons of beauty, they reconcile us with the candor of being ourselves. Some thirty works by Rose-Aimée Bélanger are featured in the exhibition Les Centenaires.
At the age of 24, Jean-Paul Riopelle left for France, where he became involved with the Surrealists. He returned to Quebec the following year and joined the Automatist movement. In 1948, he signed the Refus global manifesto. For more than three decades, he created a demanding body of work. At the age of 50, Jean-Paul Riopelle is at the peak of his art. Some thirty of Riopelle’s engravings are brought together in the exhibition Les Centenaires. Produced over two distinct decades, the ’60s and the ’80s, these prints bear a hallmark characteristic of Riopelle’s paintings and sculptures: the material is extremely expressive.
Rose-Aimée Bélanger reached the venerable age of 100 this year, while Jean-Paul Riopelle passed away at the age of 78 in 2002. Both artists witnessed the great upheavals of the last century and played an active part in defining an original Canadian art.
The exhibition Les Centenaires is a tribute to these two artists who blazed new trails.
