Dubuffet Drawings 1935-1962

Dubuffet Drawings 1935-1962 – Hardcover by Dervaux, Isabelle; Holben Ellis, Margaret; Potts, Alex; Butler, Cornelia, mint copy, exhibition catalog, MINT condition, as issued in decorative hardcovers, 2016

An important study of drawings by one of the most important French artists of the twentieth century

Dubuffet (1901–1985) achieved international recognition in the late 1940s for his paintings inspired by children’s drawings, the art of psychiatric patients, and graffiti. Drawing played a major role in the development of his art as he explored on paper new subjects and techniques, experimenting with nontraditional tools and modes of application. Despite his essential role in the postwar avant-garde and his continuous influence on the art of the following decades, Dubuffet has received less attention than other artists of his generation.

Dubuffet’s Drawings, 1935–1962 will be the first major museum exhibition devoted to works on paper by one of the most important French artists of the twentieth century. Featuring more than one hundred drawings representing Dubuffet’s development during his most innovative decades––the 1940s and 1950s––the exhibition will include rarely seen works and major loans from public and private collections in the United States and France. 150 illustrations in color and black-and-white.

“The survey devotes an entire section to beards; it is appropriately titled “Textures and Beards.” The works here go a long way to revealing the true source of Dubuffet’s power, in what in psychoanalysis is called the “return of the repressed.” So much of what Dubuffet accomplishes takes place in the most intellectually denigrated sensory register of touch. Barbe des colères (Wrathful Beard) (1959) is a bold assemblage of bits of torn paper creating an image of a bald man whose gigantic beard dominates the composition. The beard here is an instance of socially unacceptable aggression. They are scratchy and uncivilized, hence the meaning of the word rebarbative: unattractive or objectionable. Yet, the energy and humor in this image, as well as other beard-related pieces in the show, suggests that it is precisely in those most objectionable and overlooked parts of ourselves—and others—that we should look for what it means to be truly alive, and not just a slave to convention. Such was the case for Dubuffet.“

$ 150.00