BILBAO, SPAIN.- The Guggenheim Bilbao presents “Jean Dubuffet: Trace of an Adventure,” on view through April 18, 2004. With the presentation of this extensive selection of works by Jean Dubuffet, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao continues to pursue its aim of showing, in chronological order, its collections of twentieth-century art belonging to its Permanent Collection. This historical overview began in 2001 with the Selections from the Thannhauser Collection, which contained masterpieces of impressionism, post-impressionism and the first avant-garde movements. In 2002, the overview continued with an exhaustive look at the work of one of the pioneers of abstract art with the presentation Kandinsky in Context. In 2003 Jean Dubuffet will continue this historical review with the presentation of an extensive selection of the work of this French artist, one of the maximum exponents of Informalism, a movement that came into being in Europe after the World War II.  

Dubuffet was born July 31, 1901, in Le Havre, France, the son of a wealthy wine merchant. He attended art classes in his youth and in 1918 moved to Paris with his schoolmate Georges Limbour to study at the Académie Julian. After only six months he quit to work independently.  

During this time, he met Raoul Dufy, Max Jacob, and Suzanne Valadon. Between 1920 and 1922 Dubuffet led a solitary life and devoted himself to intensive studies, especially philosophy and music. About this period in his life, the artist stated, “After leaving school, I studied painting for six or seven years, along with other subjects: poetry, literature, the avant-garde, the arrière-garde, metaphysics, palaeography, ethnography, modern languages, classics; as I am sure you can see I was looking for a way in.”  

After fulfilling military service (during which time he met Fernand Léger and André Masson) and traveling to Switzerland, Dubuffet became increasingly skeptical of the “fine arts” and decided to stop painting. After six months in Argentina, he returned to Le Havre in 1925 to enter his father’s wine firm. He got married and moved to Paris, where he opened his own wine business in Bercy. In 1933 he made another attempt to concentrate exclusively on his art but was forced to abandon it in 1937 to save his business from bankruptcy. 

Autumn 1942 marks a defining moment in Dubuffet’s career: his decision to concentrate solely on his art. Despite his late beginning as a painter, Dubuffet’s success and international recognition was nearly immediate. In 1944, his first solo exhibition was held at the Galerie René Drouin, Paris. From 1945, he collected Art Brut, a term popularized by Dubuffet to refer to a range of art forms beyond the mechanisms of artistic culture. Dubuffet was the discoverer, prospector, collector, and theorist of Art Brut. He wrote extensively on the subject, founded the Compagnie de l’art brut in 1948, and amassed a large collection of works produced by the mentally ill and others on the margins of society, whose raw or innocent vision and directness of technique he admired.  

The artist’s statement, “Art speaks to the mind and not to the eyes” could be the motto of this presentation, which follows the progression of Dubuffet’s oeuvre over three distinct phases: his tactile explorations of the 1940s that incorporate materials then- “alien to art”; his highly-formalized cycle of the 1960s and 70s termed L’Hourloupe; and through his later gestural works of the 1980s.  

 The first section begins with his series from the second half of the 1940s Marionnettes de la ville et de la campagne and extends through his Matériologies series at the end of the 1950s. Dubuffet’s style was contrary to expectations of a painter in the French tradition and dealt a serious blow to commonly-held aesthetic assumptions. During this period, the focus of his numerous series vacillated between the celebration of everyday life in scenes such as riders on the Métro, as in Marionnettes, and an intense investigation of materials in landscapes devoid of human presence as in Matériologies. 

The second section begins with his Paris Circus cycle from the early 1960s. These simple descriptions of a bustling metropolis reinforce Dubuffet’s view that art can and should be made by everybody. These paintings act as a transition to his succeeding series, L’Hourloupe (1962–74). With bold lines and a limited palette, L’Hourloupe depicts a parallel world constructed from modular compartments. Dubuffet translates subject matter into homogenous parcels resembling cellular structures that are shaded with hatching of varied intensity. These works evolved into stage decor, costumes, outdoor sculpture, and even architectural constructions. 

Dedicated to the final ten years of Dubuffet’s prolific career, the third section of the exhibition draws from five of his series: Théâtres de mémoire (October 1975–August 1978), Brefs exercices (March–December 1979), Psycho-sites (1981), Mires (February 1983–March 1984), and Non-lieux (March–December 1984). Over the course of these series, Dubuffet becomes decreasingly focused on representation and on materials-both important components in his previous work. His brushwork becomes less deliberate until his final series Non-lieux bears no reference to the material world and is reduced to traces of the essential act of painting.  

Special focus is given to his complex work Coucou Bazar, which can be described as a “Tableau animé” (animated picture) and is undoubtedly the creative highpoint of L’Hourloupe. Dubuffet created hundreds of Praticables (1972–73), enlarged L’Hourloupe drawings and paintings cut out of board that are meant to be moved, or animated, on stage by actors dressed in costumes (masks, hats, capes, gloves, and shoes). Coucou Bazar has been performed only three times: in 1973 in New York at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; a few months later in Paris at the Grand Palais, and finally in 1978 in Turin. Preceded by working sketches, Coucou Bazar is represented in the exhibition by an impressive number of his Praticables and costumes arranged as they would be seen on stage. 

By placing works from a variety of mediums side by side, Jean Dubuffet: Trace of an Adventure illustrates the defining concerns of this French artist: the celebration of everyday life and an untiring curiosity for materials. This exhibition follows his wishes for a complicated, theoretical approach giving way to a “concept of clarity.” This survey of Dubuffet’s continual innovations and developments does, indeed, depict the Trace of an Adventure: the adventure of painting. In the artist ’s words, “Art’s great mission is to break down the mind’s habit of distinguishing between the two registers that inhibit and snuff out the free play of thought. Once this barrier is removed, thought regains its force and its creative thrust. This is the function of a work of art, and its raison d’être.” Curated by Agnes Husslein-Arco and Caroline Messensee. Exhibition organized by the Museum der Moderne Salzburg and co-produced by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, with the collaboration of the Fondation Dubuffet, Paris.