ean Dubuffet, known for his "art brut" and his simple, primitive style, his images seem almost encrusted on the canvas, his unique trait has made him famous all over the world. In fact, the surface of his canvas is often made up of materials such as tar, gravel, slag, ash and sand bonded with paint and glue.
Fascinated by the art of children and madmen, the artist creates the term "raw art" (art brut) which brings back to painting all the violent energy of that world.
Many of Dubuffet's works are assemblages, the result of the combination of found objects and other elements creating an integrated three-dimensional result, as for the door with the weed (1957, Guggenheim Museum, New York), a work that is mainly composed of fragments of paintings, grass and stones.
The artist returns today to the protagonist with a considerable review, curated by Sophie Webel and Frédéric Jaeger, which intends to pay homage and remember the importance of two famous exhibitions which, precisely in the lagoon city, have marked the artist's path: exhibitions at Palazzo Grassi in 1964 and at the French pavilion of the Biennale in 1984, important stages chosen by Dubuffet himself to exclusively present his most recent works of the time. The exhibition is housed in the history-rich halls of the noble floor of Palazzo Franchetti, a prestigious fifteenth-century building directly overlooking the Grand Canal and is organized by the company that manages the exhibition venue, ACP, with the precious collaboration of the Dubuffet Foundation. The catalog is published by Five Continents Editions.
The exhibition at Palazzo Franchetti presents the three most important cycles of Dubuffet's work: from the series Célébration du sol ( The Celebration of the Sun), in which the artist deepens his research on the infinite effects of matter in the 1950s and to which the Matériologies and Texturologies belong, to the cycle L'Hourloupe ( The foul language), the real "core" of Dubuffet's research, as Daniel Abadie writes, "which directs the previous and following side", developed between 1962 and 1974 and presented for the first time in the exhibition at Palazzo Grassi in 1964 The twenty or so works selected for this section reveal how the normal perception of the world is challenged by the visual stimuli of the sinuous graphics of this series, continually transforming itself into the viewer's gaze. It is a crowded art, full of suggestions, almost noisy, as the very term of "Hourloupe" (from the French entourlouper, swindler) indicates, creator of an alternative universe capable of penetrating reality itself. Interesting sculptures also belong to this cycle, such as the monumental work located in the garden of the Palace, directly overlooking the Grand Canal and therefore great visibility, a few steps from the Accademia Bridge. The eighties conclude the journey with the Mires series, well represented in the exhibition by about fifteen paintings which, with vibrant colors and fluid brushstrokes, make the physical limits of the picture yield. These are the works chosen by Dubuffet to officially represent his country at the 1984 Venice Biennale. To complete and enrich the exhibition, a studied selection of drawings, gouaches and documents bearing witness to the exhibitions of 1964 and 1984 is proposed, accompanied by photographs, letters and articles that do not neglect the artist's musical experiments. In the same period he devoted himself to sculpture, but in an unusual way. In fact, he prefers to use ordinary materials such as simple paper and light polystyrene, which he models very quickly and then easily passes from one job to another, such as sketches on paper. His latest work, in fact, is made up of large polyester paintings and resin sculptures.