Jean Dubuffet was born in LeHavre, France in 1901. As a boy, he attended local art classes and moved to Paris at seventeen years old to study at Academie Julian. He then left and travelled for six months to Italy and South America, after which, he worked as a craftsman and in his family's wine business for ten years. In 1942, he returned to art full time and produced his first solo exhibition in 1944 at the Galerie Rene Drouin. As an artist, he rejected the traditional methods and created works that revealed humanity in its purist of forms. He used materials such as glass, coal, and dirt pebbles in his works that earned him criticism and admiration in Paris. Dubuffet's work was heavily influenced by the Beligian poet, Henri Machaux and the French critic, Jean Paulhan, both of whom were close friends. For a brief time, Dubuffet lived in New York but returned to Paris to continue painting and also writing. Throughout the 1950's, he continued to experiment with raw materials in his art, referencing primitive imagery. In 1962, he developed the original style Hourloupe, a tangle of lines that form a cell and are sometimes filled with color. He died on May 12, 1985 in Paris, leaving behind an artistic legacy.
Dubuffet presented acclaimed exhibitions at Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (1960); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1962); Art Institute of Chicago (1962); Palazzo Grassi, Venice (1964); Tate, London (1966); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1966); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1966). A book of his writings, Prospectus et tous écrits suivants (Prospectus and all subsequent texts), was published in 1967. Retrospectives include: Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen (1957); Akademie der Künste, Berlin (1980); Museum moderner Kunst, Vienna (1980); Josef Haubrich Kunsthalle, Cologne (1981); and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2001).
