other artists

• Ana Mendieta
• Francis Bacon
• Hiroshi Sugimoto
• Alexander Calder
• Willem de Kooning
• Alberto Giacometti
• Henri Matisse
• Henry Moore
• Gerhard Richter
• Auguste Rodin
• Ed Ruscha
• David Smith
• Ellsworth Kelly
• Nikki Lee
• Man Ray
• John Baldessari
• Arshile Gorky

in depth: Jean Dubuffet

Jean Dubuffet (French, born Le Havre, 1901–1985), one of the most significant European artists of the postwar era, invented a body of imaginative work based on his iconoclastic concept of l'art brut (“raw art”). Rejecting traditional notions of beauty, he found authentic expression in the work of children, the psychotic, and graffiti artists. (L’Art brut did not, however, include objects made by tribal, folk, or naïve artists, whom he saw as working in relation to some stylistic tradition.)
 
Dubuffet began his art studies at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1918 but returned to Le Havre in 1925 to join his family’s wine business. Only in 1942, at the age of 41, did he devote himself to creating art full time. He began using what critic Carter Ratcliff has described as a "shocking variety of textures, images, and illusions." Over the years, Dubuffet's crude, often dense imagery moved from paintings to freestanding sculptures and three-dimensional environments.