Oct 21, 2017
Jean Dubuffet Cortège, signed and dated 1961, oil on canvas, 119.4 x 92.7 cm, private collection.
Jean Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. He was notoriously resolute in his rejection of academic art-historical precedent. He was a founder of the Art Brut movement and purposefully steered his sphere of influence towards the art of children or the mentally ill, rather than the accepted Parisian salons of preceding decades. Cortège is an example of the artist pursuing the ideals of the Art Brut movement, rejecting academic methods and art world norms with his ebullient forms and saturated palette. Articulated in vivid colour and frantic brushwork, this painting conveys a sense of the thronging urban mass.