“Art does not lie down on the bed that is made for it; it runs away as soon as one says its name; it loves to go incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what it is called.”
Jean Dubuffet
(b. Le Havre, France, 1901, d. Paris, France, 1985)
Jean Dubuffet believed that art must be part of ordinary life and sought artistic authenticity outside of established conventions and annihilation of hierarchical values.
Dubuffet looked to the margins of the everyday—the art of incarcerated and institutionalized people, mediums, and isolated provincials—to liberate his own creativity, coining the term “art brut.” His interest in the tactile possibilities of abstract art, its texture and materiality, evolved early on with the use of media such as sand, glass, and tar—an employment of matter that characterized his work as well as the Art Informel movement of the 1940s and '50s. In keeping with his exploration of the quotidian, his use of line and color was redefined in his mature work of the '60s, dominated by his renowned Hourloupe series, the longest cycle of artwork in the artist’s oeuvre, which spanned 12 years from 1962 to 1974. Dubuffet maintained an active career in his later years, prolifically creating paintings, works on paper, and monumental sculpture.
Dubuffet’s work has been featured in over 400 one-artist exhibitions throughout the world, including over 30 traveling exhibitions. He has been the subject of numerous retrospectives at institutions including the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Texas (1966); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1973, 1981); Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen (1988); National Museum of History, Taipei (1998); and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Deoksugung, South Korea (2006). Notable recent exhibitions include Metamorphoses of Landscape, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, Switzerland (2016); Drawings, 1935–1962, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York (2016); The Photographic Tool, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland (2018); Le Voyageur sans boussole, Centre Pompidou Málaga, Spain (2018); L’arte in gioco. Matière e spirito 1943–1985, Fondazione Palazzo Magnani, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2018); Jean Dubuffet and Venice, Palazzo Franchetti, Venice (2019); Jean Dubuffet, Barbican Centre, London (2020–2021); Jean Dubuffet: Ardent Celebration, Museo Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain (2022); and Jean Dubuffet. Rebonds: From One Work to Another, Fondation Dubuffet, Paris (2023–2024).
Dubuffet’s work is held in over 60 public collections worldwide including The Art Institute of Chicago; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Tate, London, among many others.
Jean Dubuffet passed away on May 12, 1985, in Paris, France.
