Faits et raisons
This painting is divided into several registers that are not in keeping with a narration. In contrast, “facts” and “reason”, which according to Dubuffet imposed a knowledgeable and constrictive representation method on artists, the figures, things, the world, shapes, are striking here by their raw presence, the signification of which does not want to impose itself. In the top left, a character in profile with a wide open eye seems lost in a landscape, whereas to the centre right, a group of individuals make up a society that you can tell is lively, through their gestures and expressive looks, but no decor. Different areas of non-figurative divided motifs intervene as layered glued papers and fill the space that is both divided up and unified by the graphic treatment in black and white, in combined solid and empty elements.
Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985)
Painter and sculptor known for being the founder of the art brut movement. Dubuffet was born Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet on 31 July 1901 at Le Havre, and studied at the Académie Julian with Raoul Dufy, Suzanne Valadon and Fernand Léger in 1918, but left his training after six months. He returned to art at the start of the 1940s and formed the Compagnie de l’Art Brut (1948 – 1951, restored in 1962) with André Breton and Slavko Kopac among others. He died on 12 May 1985 in Paris at the age of 83 and the Fondation Jean Dubuffet, created in 1973 in Val-de-Marne, continues to present his works.
