Jean Dubuffet

Frua dei Angeli, Milan

Galerie Beyeler, Basel

Private Collection, Europe

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1996

Paris, Cercle Volnay, Exposition de peintures, dessins et divers travaux exécutés de 1942 à 1954 par Jean Dubuffet, 1954, n.p., no. 93

Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Jean Dubuffet, 1973, n.p., no. 61

Madrid, Fundación Juan March, Jean Dubuffet, 1976, pp. 18-19, no. 9, illustrated in colour

Le Havre, Musée des Beaux-Arts André Malraux, Jean Dubuffet, 1977, n.p., no. 9

Berlin, Akademie der Künste; Vienna, Museum Moderner Kunst; and Cologne, Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle, Dubuffet Retrospektive, 1980-81, pp. 127 and 330, no. 113, illustrated

Saint-Paul, Fondation Maeght, Jean Dubuffet Rétrospective: peintures, sculptures, dessins, 1985, p. 79, no. 35, illustrated in colour

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Jean Dubuffet: Retrospektive, 1985-86, n.p., no.11, illustrated in colour

New York, Jan Krugier Gallery, Traces: Primitive and Modern Expressions, 2001-02, n.p., no. 8, illustrated in colour

Basel, Fondation Beyeler, Claude Monet…jusqu’à l’impressionnisme numérique, 2002, pp. 118-19, no. 50, illustrated in colour

New York, Jan Krugier Gallery; and Geneva, Galerie Jan Krugier-Ditesheim, Jean-Michel Basquiat – Gaston Chaissac – Jean Dubuffet – Joaquín Torres-Garcia: Le Feu sous la cendre, 2003, pp. 44-45, no. 26, illustrated in colour

Paris, Fondation Dina Vierny-Musée Maillol, Le Feu sous les cendres: De Picasso à Basquiat, 2005-06, pp. 58-59, illustrated in colour 

Andreas Franzke, Jean Dubuffet, Basel 1975, pp. 40-41, no. 32, illustrated in colour 

Max Loreau, Catalogue des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet, fasc. VII: tables paysagées, paysages du mental, pierres philosophiques, Paris 1979, p. 169, no. 253, illustrated

Thomas Zacharias, Blick der Moderne – Einführung in ihre Kunst, Munich 1984, p. 357, illustrated in colour

Exhibition Catalogue, Antibes, Musée Picasso (and travelling), Un siècle d’arpenteurs: Les figures de la marche, 2000-01, p. 183, no. 23, illustrated

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate although the overall tonality is deeper and richer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are a few minute chips to the paint towards the centre of the bottom edge. Very close inspection reveals some stable hairline cracks in intermittent places throughout and isolated areas where some of the elements have lifted and been stabilised, the latter of which fluoresce under ultra-violet light.
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Jean Dubuffet’s deliberate rejection of cultural pretensions and unique Art Brut aesthetic have lead him to become one of the most celebrated artists of the Twentieth Century. Indeed, his candid critique of occidental cultural institutions and fervent dismissal of conventional artistic values have earned him critically lauded retrospectives at major museums such as The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York and the Museum of Art, Dallas. As a riposte to the eminent psychiatrist and art historian, Dr Hans Prinzhorn’s influential book Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (The Art of the Mentally Ill) published in 1922, Dubuffet discarded his bourgeois upbringing and traditional education in favour of an artistic lifestyle and ideology. Inspired by Prinzhorn’s treatise, Dubuffet took profound inspiration from the spiritual philosophies of so-called ‘primitive’ cultures and the ingenuous creative production of the mentally ill. Heralding environments unspoilt by civilization, as much as an art unaffected by occidental cultural doctrines, Dubuffet believed in a sincere creative impulse in harmony with its natural surroundings and forces. In a unique celebration of innate materiality, tempered by an appreciation for the intrinsic physicality of the soil and earth, he created boundless expanses of richly impastoed surfaces and arresting textural landscapes. Paradigmatic of Dubuffet’s engrossing visual terrains Le géomancien or The geomancer is part of the artist’s acclaimed Paysages du Mental, a series of works created in the early 1950s. This title is a literal reference to the mystical concept of geomancy:  a form of ancient divination that involves the interpretation of formations created by soil, sand and rocks. Herein, the present work is a distinct manifestation of the artist’s profound preoccupation with prima materia and elemental forces.  

In accordance with the title of the series and congruent with his belief in a visceral form of creative expression, Dubuffet painted from mental images; the rugged terrain and interlacing patterns of his works emerging as much from the material, as from the vivid disarray of visual facets that inhabited his mind. A creative commitment that did not conform to any of the aesthetic canons advocated in Western art and required a completely new set of visual guidelines. As he explained: “Mental space does not resemble three-dimensional perceived space and has no use for notions such as above or below, in front of or behind, close or distant. [Mental space] presents itself as flowing, whirling, meandering water and therefore its transcription requires entirely different devices from those deemed appropriate for transcribing the perceived world” (Jean Dubuffet quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, 1973, p. 24).

In a brazen rejection of the classical three-dimensional perspective aspired to in figurative art, the primitive figures of Le géomancien merge into the vigorous topography of their surroundings, the sky and horizon functioning more as a compositional adornment than as a delineation of space. The classical medium of oil paint is transformed into a textural, gritty paste. Deep brown craters and gradients emulate the rough texture of a barren earth and in a relief-like expanse surmount almost the entirety of the picture plane. As the tactile coarseness of the material guides the compositional structure the work demonstrates the artist’s attempt to raise the material from its traditional subordinance to form.

Considering this unorthodox combination of two supposedly opposing concepts – the physicality of the material and the immaterial world of the artist’s mind – which called for a bold rejection of cultural conventions and a resolute clairvoyance, Dubuffet’s standing as one of the most pioneering artists of his time is undeniable.