1901-1985

Capturing twentieth-century alienation through his Art Brut style, Jean Dubuffet believed that vital instincts should prevail over schooled thought; preservation of raw energy and spontaneity was at the core of his figure painting.  Ambivalent about even his own enormous talent, Dubuffet was educated in Le Havre, then enrolled at Academie Julian, but withdrew.  He tried business enterprises for a short period, but dedicated himself to art in 1942.  Innocents – asylum inmates and children – served as muses; his contempt for notions of beauty “inherited from the Greeks and cultivated by magazine covers” presaged contemporary art.  Dubuffet’s work was exhibited in worldwide retrospectives during the ’50s.  His works are in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Kuntsmuseum Basel and the Tate Gallery.