Jean Dubuffet: Spur Eines Abenteuers/Trace of an Adventure

by Agnes Husslein-Arco, Juan Ignacio Vidarte, Margrit Brehm

Jean Dubuffet’s (1901-1985) artistic career encompassed a wide range of styles, themes and media. Reproductions of more than one hundred works on paper, paintings and sculptures collected in this book trace the development of a controversial artist who maintained a lifelong allegiance to art that was spontaneous and intuitive. The essays and artworks in this volume examine Dubuffet’s innovative use of materials, stylistic treatment, and content, and his transition from two- to three-dimensional forms. This book allows for a clearer understanding of the three major phases of his from the beginning of the forties when Dubuffet began to work with materials that were alien to art and culminating in his magnificent Materiologies, through the most comprehensive cycle of works, Hourloupe, to his later works in the eighties, which include Théâtre de mémoire, Brefs exercices, Psycho-sites, Mires and Non lieux. Through the comparison of paintings and sculptural works, Jean Trace of an Adventure illustrates the defining tensions in Dubuffet’s work.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2003