Dubuffet, Jean (-Philippe-Arthur)

(born , July 31, 1901, Le Havre, Fr.—died May 12, 1985, Paris) French painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He studied painting in Paris, but in 1929 he began making a living as a wine merchant. When he returned to art full-time in the early 1940s, he became a leading artist in Paris and proponent of art brut. He executed crude images incised into rough impasto surfaces made of materials such as sand, plaster, tar, gravel, and ashes bound with varnish and glue, and sculptural works made of junk materials; their unfinished appearance provoked public outrage. In the 1960s he experimented with musical composition and architectural environments, and in his later years he produced large fibreglass sculptures for public spaces.

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