Jean Dubuffet

JEAN DUBUFFET (Le Havre, France, 1901 - Paris, France, 1985).
"Personnage mi-corps", 1967.
Polyvinyl chloride with silkscreen. Copy 50/50.
Work reproduced in Webel 1089.
Signed and justified in the lower area.
Measurements: 54 x 33,5 x 3 cm.
In 1967, when the work was executed, Dubuffet was fully immersed in the expansion of L'Hourloupe, not only in painting and drawing, but also in sculpture, architecture and immersive environments. This period was characterized by an increasing theatricalization of pictorial space and a desire to erase the hierarchies between disciplines. The piece catalogued here is therefore situated at a turning point where the artist consolidated an autonomous visual vocabulary that transcended the two-dimensional support. "Personnage mi-corps" is of notable interest because it belongs to one of Dubuffet's most coveted series and because it condenses, in an accessible format, the essential principles of his language. Its chromatic vibration, its graphic immediacy and its expressive power. The singularity of the work lies in its capacity to tension the limits between figure and abstraction, proposing a "character" that does not allow itself to be fixed in a stable identity, but unfolds as a system of signs in constant mutation. In this sense, Dubuffet deliberately departs from the conventions of academic representation to inscribe himself in the territory of Art Brut, a concept he himself formulated to vindicate a spontaneous aesthetic, anti-intellectual and alien to the dominant cultural canons.
French painter and sculptor, Jean Dubuffet settled in Paris in 1918 with the idea of studying painting at the Académie Julian, but after six months of training he left his studies to become self-taught. Following his own path, in 1924 he stopped painting because of his doubts about the value of art, and took over his father's business, a wine merchant. However, in the thirties he returned to painting, although he took a new creative pause that lasted until 1942. In 1944 he held his first individual exhibition, and four years later he approached surrealism, evolving towards pataphysics in 1954. After reading Hans Prinzhorn's "Artistry of the mentally ill", Dubuffet coined the term "art brut" (raw art) for art produced by non-professionals working outside aesthetic norms, such as mental patients, prisoners and children. In fact, the artist sought to create an art free of intellectual concerns, and at times his work appears primitive and childish. Works by Dubuffet are currently held at MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Fondation de l'Hermitage in Lausanne, the Fukuoka Museum in Japan, the Kunstmuseum in Basel, the MACBA in Barcelona, the MNCARS in Madrid, the Tate Gallery in London and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, among others.