Jean Dubuffet
b. 1901, Le Havre,
France; d. 1985, Paris
Jean Dubuffet was born July 31, 1901, in Le Havre,
France. He attended art classes in his youth and in 1918 moved to Paris to
study at the Académie Julian, which he left after six months. During this
time, Dubuffet met Raoul Dufy, Max Jacob,
Fernand Léger,
and Suzanne Valadon and became fascinated with Hans Prinzhorn’s book on
psychopathic art. He traveled to Italy in 1923 and South America in 1924.
Then, Dubuffet gave up painting for about ten years, working as an
industrial draftsman and later in the family wine business. He committed
himself to becoming an artist in 1942.
Dubuffet’s first solo exhibition was held at the Galerie
René Drouin, Paris, in 1944. During the 1940s, the artist associated with
André Breton, Georges Limbour, Jean Paulhan, and Charles Ratton. His style
and subject matter in this period owed a debt to
Paul
Klee. From
1945, he collected
Art Brut, spontaneous, direct works by
untutored individuals, such as mental patients. The Pierre Matisse Gallery
gave him his first solo show in New York in 1947.
From 1951 to 1952, Dubuffet lived in New York. He then
returned to Paris, where a retrospective of his work took place at the
Cercle Volney in 1954. His first museum retrospective occurred in 1957 at
the Schloss Morsbroich, Leverkusen. Dubuffet exhibitions were subsequently
held at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, in 1960–61; the Museum of
Modern Art, New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago in 1962; Palazzo
Grassi, Venice, in 1964; the Tate Gallery, London, and Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam, in 1966; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in
1966–67.
A collection of Dubuffet’s writings, Prospectus et
tous écrits suivants, was published in 1967, the same year he started
his architectural structures. Soon thereafter, he began numerous
commissions for monumental outdoor sculptures. In 1971, he produced his
first theater props, the “practicables.” A Dubuffet retrospective was
presented at the Akademie der Kunst, Berlin, the Museum Moderner Kunst,
Vienna, and the Joseph-Haubrichkunsthalle, Cologne, in 1980–81. In 1981,
the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum observed the artist’s 80th birthday with
an exhibition. Dubuffet died May 12, 1985, in Paris.
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