Jean Dubuffet

Several attempts to become an artist

Jean Dubuffet studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Le Havre and spent several months at the Académie Julian after moving to Paris in 1918. He opened a studio and met artists including Suzanne Valadon, Max Jacob, André Masson, Fernand Léger, and Juan Gris, but repeatedly abandoned painting to work in his family's wine business.

The Paris return of 1942

Dubuffet returned permanently to painting in 1942. His gouaches of the Paris Metro used awkward outlines, compressed crowds, and deliberately rough drawing. Galerie René Drouin gave him his first solo exhibition in 1944.

The writer and editor Jean Paulhan became one of Dubuffet's most important interlocutors. Paulhan recognized the force of the early work and helped connect the painter to writers and artists around La Nouvelle Revue Française.

Art Brut and the Hourloupe

Dubuffet used the term Art Brut for work made outside academic and professional art culture. He collected drawings, carvings, and objects by psychiatric patients, prisoners, spiritualists, and other self-taught makers, arguing that their work could escape learned conventions.

His own practice expanded through sand, tar, thick paste, graffiti-like figures, sculpture, music, and architecture. The Hourloupe cycle, begun in 1962, turned red, blue, black, and white interlocking cells into paintings, costumes, buildings, and walk-in environments. Dubuffet died in Paris in 1985.