Jean Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. He was born in 1901 in Le Havre to successful wine merchants. Exposed to art during his childhood through art classes, he moved to Paris to study painting at the Academie Julian in 1918, where he met and formed friendships with many other well-known artists including Fernand Leger. Unsatisfied with academic art training, Dubuffet only stayed at the school for 6 months, after which he chose to go study independently. He ended up abandoning art for a while, turning instead to the family business of winemaking. He opened his own wine business which was quite successful.
In 1942, Dubuffet decided to devote himself back to art. he was most interested in painting subjects of everyday life: people sitting in the Paris Metro or people walking. He often painted individuals in cramped spaces, which had a psychological impact on the viewer.
In 1944, he had his first solo show at the Galerie Rene Drouin in Paris. This was his 3rd attempt to become an established artist (so be persistent!). In 1945, Dubuffet was impressed by a show of Jean Fautrier paintings: he viewed is as meaningful art that expressed the depth of a person. Shortly after this, he began to use thick oil paints mixed with various stuff for his pieces — mud, sand, coal, dust, straw, gravel. This led to some backlash from critics, who accused him of ‘anarchy,’ and ‘scraping the dust bin’.
Despite this, he quickly became successful when he moved to America. He was included in a Pierre Matisse exhibition in 1946. Matisse was an influential dealer of contemporary European art in America. Dubuffet’s work was placed alongside Picasso, Braque and Rouault. By the following year, Dubuffet had his first solo show in New York.
One of the most important things Dubuffet started was the Art Brut movement. ‘Art Brut’ means ‘raw art’ in french. He became very interested in art produced by non-professionals such as psychiatric patients, prisoners, and children. He collected this type of art and had exhibitions for the pieces. Inspired by the art he was collecting, he wanted to create art himself that was free from intellectual concerns. Many of his ‘art brut’ style pieces have been called primitive and childlike and compared to wall scratchings and children’s art.
From 1962 onwards, he limited his palette to red, white, black and blue, which makes his paintings from this time very cohesive. Near the end of the 1960s, he turned himself mostly towards sculpture.
I find some of Dubuffet’s work very childlike looking, but some of even those pieces contain really interesting and humorous subject matter, which I really appreciate. A lot of his later work with the limited colour palette I really enjoy.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Dubuffet