Sixty Works by Modern Masters - Flipbook - Page 105
Jean Dubuffet
Jean Dubuffet
French, 1901 - 1985
Arbres, Boeuf et Paysan, 1965
Gouache on paper
20 x 26 inches / 51 x 67 cm
Signed with the artist’s initials, inscribed
and dated lower right: à Ursula J.D. 65
Arbres, Boeuf et Paysan provides
an excellent example of the hard,
unaccented style which defines
Dubuffet’s Hourloupe series. The
artist’s controlled range of pigments
in the work is characteristic of
his desire to make the function of
colour non-expressionist. Sinuous
black lines dividing distinct patches
of design on the surface of the
paper evoke the practice of graphic
illustration.
The apparent certainty of Dubuffet’s
execution, however, is tempered
by his desire for each picture in
the Hourloupe series to capture
the essence of ‘fleeting, ambiguous
figures’, that have come into being
through the ‘spontaneous and [...]
uncontrolled impulses’ of his hand.
Provenance
A gift from the artist to the previous owner in 1965
Exhibited
Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Jean Dubuffet: 1901-1985,
December 1989-February 1990, no. 81, illustrated in colour, p. 43
Literature
M. Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubuffet: L’Hourloupe II,
fascicule XXI, Paris 1968, no. 68, illustrated p. 43
"In all my work there are two different winds that blow,
one carrying me to exaggerate the marks of intervention,
and the other, the opposite, which leads me to eliminate
all human presence... and to drink from the source of this
absence."
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