He became the first Canadian painter since James Wilson Morrice to attain widespread international recognition[1] and high praise, both during his career and after his death.

His parents encouraged his interest in art and allowed the young Riopelle to take classes with Henri Bisson (1900–1973), who taught drawing and painting out of his home on weekends.

[2] He studied under Paul-Émile Borduas in the 1940s and was a member of Les Automatistes, a group of Montreal artists who were interested in Surrealist techniques, particularly automatic drawing with its embrace of the imagination and creativity born out of the unconscious mind.

Breaking with traditional conventions in 1945 after reading André Breton's Le Surréalisme et la Peinture, he began experimenting with non-objective (or non-representational) painting.

[9] His 1992 painting Hommage à Rosa Luxemburg is Riopelle's tribute to Mitchell, who died that year, and is regarded as a high point of his later work.

Riopelle, though, claimed that the heavy impasto was unintentional: "When I begin a painting," he said, "I always hope to complete it in a few strokes, starting with the first colours I daub down anywhere and anyhow.

"[12][14] A third element, range of gloss, in addition to color and volume, plays a crucial role in Riopelle's oil paintings.

These three elements; color, volume, and range of gloss, would form the basis of his oil painting technique throughout his long and prolific career.

[20] After diversifying his means of expression during the 1960s (turning to ink on paper, watercolours, lithography, collage and oils), he experimented with sculptural installations, including a fountain in Montreal's Olympic Stadium, called La joute.

[22] His painting Hommage à Rosa Luxemburg (1992, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec), done after her death, is a tribute to love and to life, to the American painter Joan Mitchell who was his companion for 25 years and is a narrative sequence of 30 tableaux, integrated into a triptych measuring more than 40 meters in length.

[4] Riopelle was arguably one of the most important Canadian artists of the 20th century, establishing his reputation in the burgeoning postwar art scene of Paris, where his entourage included André Breton, Sam Francis and Samuel Beckett.

A menagerie of animals and mythological figures are caught up in the game, encircling a central structure that Riopelle called the "Tower of Life".

[26] Its relocation to the La Place Jean-Paul-Riopelle during the redevelopment of the Quartier international de Montréal in 2003 provoked controversy and outrage from residents of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, who claimed that moving it from the Parc Olympique deprived it of the context required for its full meaning as an homage to sport.

One of his largest compositions, Point de rencontre, was originally intended for the Toronto airport, but is at Rideau Hall on loan from France's Centre national des arts plastiques until 2024.

[29] The exhibition explores Riopelle's interest in non-Western art, as sparked by his "friend and collector Georges Duthuit and the writings of anthropologists and ethnologists, such as Marius Barbeau, Jean Malaurie and Claude Lévi-Strauss".

[30] A set of postage stamps depicting portions of Riopelle's painting L'Hommage à Rosa Luxemburg was issued by Canada Post on Oct. 7, 2003.