Jean Dubuffet: Paintings and Drawings
Press Release
December 3, 1994 through February 3, 1995

Los Angeles—An exhibition of canvas and drawings by Jean Dubuffet, years 1942-1982, will be shown on December 3, 1994 through February 3, 1995 at the Kantor Gallery, Located at 8642 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, California.

Jean Dubuffet was born1901 and died in 1985. For many years he’s regarded as the most important artist to develop in Europe since the Second World War, and for some he’s one of the two or three artist of major importance after Picasso and Matisse that this century has produced.

It was not until 1944 that Dubuffet definitely decided to be a professional artist (in the sense that he stopped earning a living as a wine merchant) although he had, by his interests and involvements, been one for many years before that. There is little doubt that he had contemplated becoming a writer, had he done so, we would have been left with texts as powerful and incisive as those of Artaud, Celine and Genet. But it was Dubuffet’s contention that raw human thought (and so much of this relates to the unconscious) was better expressed visually than in written form.

The world Dubuffet wished to communicate to us about was that of the commonplace and everyday. Dubuffet’s work between 1942 and that start of his ‘Hourloupe’ series in the summer of 1962 appears to be full of volute-faces. He used many material and mediums, such as butterfly wings, cement, and oil paint: changing direction again and again as to revitalize himself. The common characteristic of these works was their non-specific subject matter.

Before the summer of 1962, Dubuffet had kept changing styles. For the next twelve years his work was concentrated in one direction: the ‘Hourloupe’—a word and a style created from doodlings in July 1962. The evolved works are basically restricted to four colors (red, blue, black, and white) and the component pars have to the feeling of jigsaw puzzle pieces, often with crosshatched lines. Dubuffet had, with the ‘Hourloupe’, created his own distinct language: a world of fantasy and grotesque figures and shapes that belong only to him.

By early autumn 1974, Dubuffet had come to the end of years of working within the self-imposed limitations of the ‘Hourloupe’ series. For the rest of his life his painting and drawings on paper were to be freer and looser than any of his earlier work, changing materials once again to revitalize him, such as crayons and felt pens.

A reception will be held on opening night, December3, 1994 at the Kantor Gallery between the hours of 5pm and7pm.