Fondation jean dubuffet biography

French painter and sculptor

Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (French pronunciation:[ʒɑ̃filipaʁtyʁdybyfɛ]; 31 July 1901 – 12 May 1985) was a French painter and sculptor of the Ecole de Paris (School of Paris). His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so-called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making. He is perhaps best known for founding the art movement art brut, and for the collection of works—Collection de l'art brut—that this movement spawned. Dubuffet enjoyed a prolific art career, both in France and in America, and was featured in many exhibitions throughout his lifetime.

Early life

Dubuffet was born in Le Havre to a family of wholesale wine merchants who were part of the wealthy bourgeoisie. His childhood friends included the writers Raymond Queneau and Georges Limbour. He moved to Paris in 1918 to study painting at the Académie Julian, becoming close friends with the artists Juan Gris, André Masson, and Fernand Léger. Six months later, upon finding academic training to be distasteful, he left the Académie to study independently. During this time, Dubuffet developed many other interests, including free noise music, poetry, and the study of ancient and modern languages. Dubuffet also traveled to Italy and Brazil, and upon returning to Le Havre in 1925, he married for the first time and went on to start a small wine business in Paris. He took up painting again in 1934 when he made a large series of portraits in which he emphasized the vogues in art history. But

The Closerie Falbala, a major work by the painter Jean Dubuffet, stands within a large walled garden in Périgny, Val-de-Marne. This colossal work covering 1,610 m², a listed Historic Monument since 1998, was created by the painter, sculptor, visual artist and inventor of the Art Brut concept, between 1971 and 1973. He was 70 years old at the time.

Between sculpture and architecture, the work represents a walled garden surrounding a villa made of laminated resin, the Villa Falbala. Its walls, painted in white and adorned with black lines, as is the ground, are up to 8 metres tall in places. When you enter, you'll have the strange feeling of walking into a black and white maze, where the lines intermingle and criss-cross.

The Villa Falbala was initially built to house the Cabinet logologique, a place for meditation that Jean Dubuffet designed between 1967 and 1969, which is also open to visitors. The artist started the Jean Dubuffet Foundation to show off all his work in one location, which he believed was the only way to understand an artist's work. On the premises, more than 2,500 works of art - paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and architectural models - invite you to discover the artist's unique and unusual world. Guided tours by appointment only.

Jean Dubuffet was born in Le Havre on 31 July 1901 to a family of wine merchants. In 1918, Dubuffet moved to Paris to study painting at the Académie Julian, where he became close friends with Juan Gris, André Masson and Fernand Léger. After 6 months, Dubuffet grew disillusioned with academic training and left the Académie. Dubuffet continued to paint independently until 1924 before stopping altogether to run his own wine business. Although he briefly took up painting again in the 1930s, it wasn’t until 1942 that he fully committed to life as an artist.

Establishing a studio on the rue Lhomond in Paris, Dubuffet worked at great speed and freedom exploring a wide variety of media and techniques, including the creation of his ‘hautes pâtes’, tactile paintings made from a thick impasto consisting of a mixture of paint with crude materials. In 1944, Dubuffet had his first exhibition at the Galerie René Drouin. In 1947, Dubuffet has his first New York solo show with Pierre Matisse. Dubuffet’s interest resided in the ‘anti-cultural’, art unaffected by tradition or style, a type of art he coined ‘Art Brut’. Over the course of his life, Dubuffet assembled an Art Brut collection of over 5,000 works by 133 different artists, which he donated to the city of Lausanne in 1971.

Dubuffet lived in Paris until 1954, where alongside the hautes pâtes he developed the pâtes battues, a painting process where he would apply thick layers of white paste over painted dark backgrounds. Between 1954 and 1961 Dubuffet was based in Durtol, Auvergne, and then Vence on the Côte d’Azur, before returning to Paris.  During this period, Dubuffet explored sculpture and adapted a traditional Tyrolean plasterers technique for his Texturologies. In 1962, Dubuffet inadvertently inaugurated his L’Hourloupe series whilst doodling during a phone call, a ser