JEAN DUBUFFET “GRAND PALAIS”, 1973
Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) is the bad boy of French Modernism. Some thirty years before Keith Harring tagged the streets and subways of New York City, Dubuffet similarly created a semi-figurative visual language that shocked the art world.
Dubuffet was loosely associated with the Surrealists in Paris during the late 1940’s. However in the succeeding decade he coined the term “Art Brut”, which referred to art being produced by individuals on the margin of society, including the mentally ill and prison inmates. He would be both a proponent and leading producer of this aesthetic. Dubuffet’s version of figuration and abstraction was both naive and confrontational. Beginning in the mid-1960’s Dubuffet’s palette focused on black, white, red and navy creating forms and figures that foreshadow Keith Harring. This lithograph is a paradigm of his style.
Ironically, despite Dubuffet’s support for outsider art he was embraced by the French public and international art world. In November of 2009 the price record for a Dubuffet work was broken again, when Sotheby’s sold a painting from the early 1960’s for $6.1 million.
This lithograph was also produced as a poster for the Festival d’Automne. This series was hand-printed on arches, signed, dated and numbered (74/100) by the artist from an edition of 100.
$4,500
