Jean Dubuffet

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Maximilian Schell, Vienna
Sale: Christie's, New York, Contemporary Art, 20 November 1996, Lot 23
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Landscaped Tables, Landscapes of the Mind, Stones of Philosophy, 1952, no. 4, illustrated
New York, The Museum of Modern Art; Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Work of Jean Dubuffet, 1962, p. 54, illustrated
New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Venice, The Grand Palais, Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, 1973, p. 87, no. 48, illustrated
Paris, Galerie Nationales du Grand Palais, Dubuffet, 1973, p. 56, no. 47, illustrated
Berlin, Akademie der Künste; Vienna, Museum Moderner Kunst; Cologne, Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle, Dubuffet Retrospective, 1980-81, no. 92, illustrated
London, Tate Gallery, Paris Post War: Art and Existentialism 1945-1955, 1993, p. 84, no. 18, illustrated

Max Loreau, Catalogue des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet, fasc. VII: Tables Paysagées, Paysages du Mental, Pierres Philosophiques, Lausanne 1979, p. 15, no. 1, illustrated
Mildred Glimcher, Jean Dubuffet, Towards An Alternative Reality, New York 1987, p. 117, illustrated
Arne Glimcher, Jean Dubuffet's Radiant Earth, New York 1996, no. 2, illustrated

Dubuffet painted The Geologist in 1950, a period during which the artist occupied himself with the importance of material and texture alongside examining the surface and structure of the earth. In the present example, Dubuffet transforms the plane of the canvas into a bed of earth, rough and rich in texture; rocky and hazardous for the small solitary figure cautiously exploring on high. The horizon line evokes a boundless expanse of earth, allowing the viewer to dwell on the magical quality of landscape. Dubuffet's investigation into this was highlighted during his visit to the Sahara for the first time in 1947 where he was to be liberated from the constraints of perspectival depth. The artist further elaborated, "Perhaps it was the time I spent in the deserts of White Africa that sharpened my taste (so fundamental to the mood of Islam) for the little, the almost nothing, and, especially, in my art, for the landscapes where one finds only the formless – flats without end, scattered stones – every element definitely outlined such as trees, roads, houses etc., eliminated. Surely I love especially the earth and enjoy places of this sort. But I must say also that a picture, where a painter would have succeeded in producing strongly a presence of life without employing anything more precise than formless terrain, would be for me very worthwhile: and that is why I always come back to the enterprise. It seems to me in the life enclosed in such a picture would be – by being born in such dismalness – more marvellous; and it seems to me also the effect of gasping produced by the mechanisms of the creation of life, in a painting of this kind, would be more intense that in any other, where the artist makes it easy for himself to dodge the difficulty by peopling his work with objects easily recognisable." The artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, MOMA, The Work of Jean Dubuffet, 1962, p. 69