(1901- )
French painter, sculptor, printmaker, collector and writer he was temperamentally opposed to authority and any suggestion of discipline and devised for himself a coherent, if rebellious, attitude towards the arts and culture.For all his maverick
challenges to the values of the art world, Dubuffet’s career exemplified the way in which an avant-garde rebel could encounter notoriety, then fame and eventual reverence. His revolt against beauty and conformity has come to be seen as a
symptomatic and appreciable influence in 20th-century culture.
Jean Dubuffet was born on July 31, 1901, in Le Havre, France. He attended art classes in his youth and in 1918 moved to Paris to study at the “Académie Julian”, which he left after six months. During this time, Dubuffet met Raoul Dufy, Max
Jacob, Fernand Léger, and Suzanne Valadon and became fascinated with Hans Prinzhorn’s book on psychopathic art. He traveled to Italy in 1923 and South America in 1924. Then Dubuffet gave up painting for about ten years, working as
an industrial draftsman and later in the family wine business. He committed himself to become an artist in 1942.
Dubuffet did not waste time during the next four decades: “For the first time I allowed myself carte blanche to paint in perfect liberty, and at top speed, without troubling to cast a critical gaze upon my work, and experimenting in all directions.”
Dubuffet’s first solo exhibition was held at the Galerie René Drouin, Paris, in 1944; the Pierre Matisse Gallery gave him his first solo show in New York in 1947. During the 1940s, the artist associated with André Breton, Georges Limbour,
Jean Paulhan, Paul Eluard, Henri Michaux and Charles Ratton, and his style and subject matter owed a debt to Paul Klee. From 1945, he collected Art Brut, spontaneous, direct works by untutored individuals, such as the mentally ill and
children. He additionally founded the organization Compagnie de l’Art Brut (1948–51) with writers, critics, and dealers from Dada and Surrealist circles. For the first public Art Brut exhibition at Galerie René Drouin in 1949, Dubuffet published
a manifesto in which he proclaimed the style’s superiority over officially recognized art.
From 1951 to 1952, Dubuffet lived in New York. He then returned to Paris, where a retrospective of his work took place at the Cercle Volney in 1954. His first museum retrospective occurred in 1957 at the Schlo Morsbroich (now Museum
Morsbroich), Leverkusen, West Germany. Dubuffet exhibitions were subsequently held at the Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris (1960–61); Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Art Institute of Chicago (1962); Palazzo Grassi, Venice (1964);
Tate Gallery, London, and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1966); and Guggenheim Museum (1966–67).
A collection of Dubuffet’s writings, Prospectus et tous écrits suivants (Prospectus and all subsequent texts), was published in 1967, the same year, he started his architectural structures. Soon thereafter, he began numerous commissions for
monumental outdoor sculptures. In 1971, he produced his first theater props, the “practicables.” A Dubuffet retrospective was presented at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Museum moderner Kunst, Vienna; and Joseph-Haubrichkunsthalle,
Cologne (1980–81). In 1981, the Guggenheim Museum observed the artist’s 80th birthday with an exhibition. He was also the subject of a major retrospective at the Centre Georges Pompidou (2001). Dubuffet died on May 12, 1985.
Museums and Art Galleries Collections
Dubuffet Foundation, France
Guggenheim Museum
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
California State University Library
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana
Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, New York
Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Argentina
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana
Reina Sofía National Museum, Madrid
San Diego Museum of Art
San Diego Museum of Art
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt
Tate Gallery, London, England
Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran
Wright Museum of Art at Beloit College, Wisconsin