Jean Dubuffet
Dubuffet was born in Le Havre. He moved to Paris in 1918 to study painting at the Académie Julian, but after six months he left the Académie to study independently. In 1924, doubting the value of art, he stopped painting and took over his father’s business selling wine. He took up painting again in the 1930s, but again stopped, only turning to art for good in 1942. His first solo show came in 1944. He approached the surrealist group in 1948, then the College of Pataphysique in 1954.
At his death in 1985. at the age of 84,
Jean Dubuffet was acknowledged to be
one of the most important artists of the
post-war generation. A wine merchant
turned polemicist turned art rebel, the 43-
year-old Dubuffet had his first one-man
show in Paris in 1944, with the Germans
barely departed. Violently anti-tradition at
a time when many of the French longed
for a return to normalcy, Dubuffet antagonized
the art establishment with his dynamic style–
and his articulate arguments justifying his
new way of thinking.
