Dubuffet and the City: People, Place, and Urban Space

Picturing the postwar city in the paintings and architectural projects of the Art Brut pioneer

This is the first in-depth study to address the role of the city in the work of French artist Jean Dubuffet (1901–84). Dubuffet promoted the art of children and the mentally ill as Art Brut, and sought to emulate the immediacy of their untrained styles in his own work. But this publication reveals another side of Dubuffet―an artist grounded in his own place and time, a participant in the day’s activities and discourses.

Dubuffet and the City: People, Place and Urban Space examines the role of the city in the formation of Dubuffet’s work: the city as a material, as a source and as a vehicle for ideas. Berrebi analyzes works in which Dubuffet depicts city dwellers, sites and urban spaces, and discusses the artist’s architectural projects from the 1960s and '70s against the background of heated debates in the field of postwar urbanism.

Accompanying and extending an exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Zürich, this volume includes full-color reproductions of Dubuffet’s artworks, as well as little-known archival material from the Fondation Dubuffet and several texts by the artist, translated here in English for the first time.