Modern & Postwar Artists
Jean Dubuffet
1901 - 1985
In his seminal modernist paintings, Jean Dubuffet delved deep into questions of ground and materiality. Such themes were highly charged during the post–WWII period in which he worked, shortly after the destruction of many European cities as well as Hiroshima.
The surfaces of his canvases are thick and clotted; their aesthetic is muddy and scatological. Dubuffet coined the term “Art Brut” to describe the kind of work that he collected and aspired toward: the untrained,outsider art of alienated groups, including children and the mentally ill.