Beschreibung:

JEAN DUBUFFET (1901-1985)Site Avec 8 Personnages (E39) 1981 signed with the artist's initials and dated 81 acrylic on paper mounted on canvas 20 1/8 by 13 3/4 in. 51.1 by 34.9 cm. FootnotesProvenance Pace Gallery, New York Collection of Shaindy Fenton, Fort Worth Private Collection, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2001 Exhibited New York, Pace Gallery, Jean Dubuffet Partitions 1980-81, Psycho-sites 1981, 1982-1983 Literature Max Loreau, Ed., Catalogue des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet Fascicule XXXIV: Psycho-sites, Paris 1984, p. 20, n. 39, illustrated in black and white Executed in 1981, Site Avec 8 Personnages (E39) is a compelling example of Jean Dubuffet's Psycho-sites, illustrating a striking visual energy through a radiant palette. Widely recognised as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, Dubuffet sought to create work which shunned traditional notions of beauty and favoured automatic forms of expression. Born in Le Havre in 1901, Dubuffet began painting at the age of seventeen and studied briefly at the Académie Julian in Paris. During this time, Dubuffet met Raoul Dufy Max Jacob Fernand Léger and Suzanne Valadon and became fascinated with Dr. Hans Prinzhorn's book on psychopathic art. He travelled to Italy and South America in the early 1920s and returned to France in 1925 to join the family business as a wine merchant. It was not until 1942 that he finally committed to making art in earnest, and it is his body of work from this period onwards which has distinguished him as an outstanding innovator of post-war European painting. Dubuffet sought to redefine aesthetic norms by drawing on the art of children, prisoners, psychics, the uneducated, and the institutionalised, coining the term Art Brut as a reflection of the creative possibilities outside the conventions of the day. Influenced by Prinzhorn's theories, Dubuffet's Art Brut regarded instinct, passion, mood, violence, and madness, rather than analysis and reason, as a psychological aesthetic whose proximity to nature and natural forms was closer than traditional notions of beauty that were pervasive in the French academies. His work was revelatory amongst the Parisian avant-garde, impressing upon figures including the surrealist poet Paul Éluard and the expressionist painter Jean Fautrier Dubuffet surrounded himself with artists who shared his views, and in 1944 he was honoured with his first solo exhibition at the Galerie René Drouin in Paris. It was a show that shocked his critics and amplified his avant-garde credentials, captured in his paintings that represented the aloof, the unassuming, common and disregarded corners of French society. Site Avec 8 Personnages (E39) from 1981, is a superb work from Dubuffet's final years before his death in 1985. It is a period that sees the artist focus on two major series, the Partitions and Psycho-sites; passages of work that he made between 1980 and 1981 and was the subject of the 1981-1982 exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York, where this work was exhibited. In this present work, Dubuffet juxtaposes uniform, flat colour against expressive mark-making, creating a dynamic contrast. Figures are separated within defined linear spaces, giving the appearance of collaged elements. There is no organized or logical space within the canvas, and as a result the viewer's eye is forced to rove throughout, piecing together the various elements. The artist sought to represent the interior of the mind with figures contained within the chaos of the highly gestural, unrestrained brushwork around them. In accordance with his Art Brut objective to translate direct, immediate sensation in his works, Dubuffet aimed to make his paintings inviting and relatable. Rather than creating abstract, intangible meditations on mental space, he filled them with characters who are almost generic, dream-like; figures who appear in our mind's eye as representative bodies, rather than specific forms. These f