Jean Dubuffet

Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet, a French painter and sculptor linked to the School of Paris, rejected conventional ideas of beauty in favor of what he saw as a more genuine, human way of making images. He championed so-called "low art" and is most famous for launching the art brut movement and the associated Collection de l'art brut.

Dubuffet grew up in Le Havre, the son of wealthy wine merchants. As a child, he befriended writers Raymond Queneau and Georges Limbour. In 1918 he moved to Paris to study painting at the Académie Julian, where he got close to artists Juan Gris, André Masson, and Fernand Léger. But after six months, he found academic training unappealing and left to study on his own. During this period, he picked up interests in free noise music, poetry, and ancient and modern languages. He traveled to Italy and Brazil, then returned to Le Havre in 1925, married for the first time, and started a small wine business in Paris. He returned to painting in 1934, producing a large series of portraits that highlighted trends in art history, but soon stopped again to focus on his wine business in Bercy during the German Occupation. Later, in an autobiography, he bragged about making big profits by selling wine to the Wehrmacht.

In 1942, Dubuffet decided to commit himself to art once more. He took his subjects from everyday scenes—people on the Paris Métro or strolling in the countryside. He painted with strong, unbroken colors reminiscent of Fauvism and the Brücke painters, using jarring, discordant patches of color. Many works placed one or more figures in tight spaces, creating a distinct psychological effect on viewers. In 1943, his childhood friend George Limbour brought writer Jean Paulhan to Dubuffet’s studio, where Paulhan was impressed by the then-unknown work. This meeting became a turning point. Dubuffet’s first solo show took place in October 1944 at Galerie René Drouin in Paris, marking his third attempt to establish himself as an artist.

A 1945 Paris exhibition of Jean Fautrier’s paintings deeply impressed Dubuffet. He saw in Fautrier’s work a direct, pure expression of human depth. Emulating him, Dubuffet began using thick oil paint mixed with materials like mud, sand, coal dust, pebbles, glass, string, straw, plaster, gravel, cement, and tar. This let him abandon the brush and traditional canvas application, instead creating a paste he could scratch and slash. This impasto technique appeared in his series “Hautes Pâtes” (Thick Impastoes), shown at his second major exhibition, *Microbolus Macadam & Cie/Hautes Pates*, in 1946 at Galérie René Drouin. Critics reacted harshly to his crude materials and ironic tone, accusing him of anarchy and “scraping the dustbin.” But some praise came too: Clement Greenberg called Dubuffet perhaps the most original painter from the School of Paris since Miró, and said he might be the only new painter of real importance in Paris in the last decade. Dubuffet became very prolific in the United States after his first New York exhibition in 1951.

After 1946, Dubuffet began a series of portraits using the same thick materials, deliberately anti-psychological and anti-personal. His “models” were friends like Henri Michaux, Francis Ponge, George Limbour, Jean Paulhan, and Pierre Matisse. In 1948 he approached the surrealist group, and in 1954 the College of Pataphysique. He was friendly with playwright Antonin Artaud, admired writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and stayed closely connected to the surrealist circle around André Masson. In 1944 he started an important relationship with Jean Paulhan, a resistance fighter and writer who also fought against what he called “intellectual terrorism.”

Dubuffet found quick success in the American art market, largely thanks to his inclusion in a 1946 Pierre Matisse exhibition. Matisse, a powerful dealer of European contemporary art in America who strongly backed School of Paris artists, placed Dubuffet’s work alongside Picasso, Braque, and Rouault—making Dubuffet one of only two young artists so honored. A *Newsweek* article called him the “darling of Parisian avant-garde circles,” and Greenberg praised his three canvases in a review. In 1947, Dubuffet had his first solo American show at the same gallery, and reviews were mostly favorable, leading to at least one more exhibition.