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From 1908 Jean Dubuffet attended elementary school. He then completed his high school diploma in Le Havre in 1918. There he also met the writers Raymond Queneau and George Limbour, which developed into a lifelong friendship. After graduating from high school, Dubuffet moved to Paris. He wanted to become a painter there. He also attended classes at the Académie Julian. Six months later he dropped out of his studies. He wanted to teach himself to paint, outside of the academic world. His earliest pictures depict the subway and are based on the graffiti art of the time. During this time he also studied music, linguistics and literature. Dubuffet maintained contacts with the graphic artist and designer Raoul Dufy as well as with the writers Max Jacob and Charles-Albert Cingria. The Swiss art critic Paul Budry gave him the book "The Art of the Mentally Ill" by Hans Prinzhorn. During his military service he came into contact with spiritualist art.
Dubuffet's doubts about cultural values led him to give up painting in 1924. In the same year, 1924, he worked briefly as a technical draftsman in Buenos Aires. He then returned to Le Havre, worked in his parents' wine business and got married. In 1933 he made a new attempt at painting - with interruptions. During this time he turned to Romanesque calligraphy, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Middle Latin philology. It was not until 1942 that he finally returned to painting. He decided for the last time to become an artist. To do this, he sold the wine business. During this time he met the French architect, painter and designer Le Corbusier, with whom he later traveled to Switzerland. In 1945 the artist traveled to Switzerland and came into contact with the works of Adolf Wölfli, Heinrich Anton Müller and Aloyse Corbaz. In 1944 and 1945 he exhibited his works at the René Drouin Gallery in Paris. His works, reminiscent of children's scribbles, were dismissed as barbaric.
Dubuffet's style did not correspond to the taste of the time or to artistic standards. He used coarse painting paste into which he carved archaic figures. He also did not adhere to conventionalized taste standards in female nudes. He created misshapen primitive creatures that he endowed with heads that were much too small or oversized or with spindly arms. Dubuffet turned to the expressions of mentally ill children and members of primitive peoples. Like the Surrealists, he rejected the moral and aesthetic values of Western culture. Jean Dubuffet became the main representative of "Art brut", or gross art. He put together one of the most important collections of art by mentally ill people and other social outsiders, the "Collection de l'Art Brut". In it he professed a view in which art could do without academic training. In 1947 he had his first exhibition at Pierre Matisse's New York gallery.
A retrospective took place in Paris at the Cercle Volney. And in 1973 another retrospective was organized at New York's Guggenheim Museum. In 1962 he developed the artistic language "Hourloupe", which consists of a figurative-abstract cell font. In 1985 he began writing his autobiography. Dubuffet's art is characterized by the fact that it ran counter to contemporary art and did not meet its standards. His works not only reflect the spontaneity, but also the randomness and irrationality. This impression is further enhanced by the fact that he uses materials that are not easy to work with. This is how works of art are created from plaster, putty, sand, glue and other materials, which he worked on and shaped by kneading, scoring or spatulating.
Jean Dubuffet died on May 12, 1985 in Paris.
