Jean Dubuffet

The  French artist, Dubuffet moved to Paris in the summer of 1948 at the age of 35. When Slavko Kopac and Jean Dubuffet first met, they immediately became great friends and Kopac became an important confidant in Dubuffet's life. In the same year, Dubuffet also met André Breton and Jean Paulhan - la Compagnie de l'art brut and was invited to embark upon this new artistic adventure. Slavko Kopac assumed the role of conservator of the collection, situated in a pavilion loaned to the company by Gallimard, at the rue de l'Université, Paris. He also fulfilled the more unofficial role of mediator between Dubuffet and Breton, whenever they were drifting apart over artistic differences. Kopac would then highlight the link between surrealism and art brut to remove the wig between the two artists. In 1949 Dubuffet gifted Kopac: « Petit paysage avec personnages » as a token of friendship. How much he values Kopac, is reflected in the mention on the panel, he truly considers Kopac as his equal in painting. The two friends, at that time, wondered off together on a pictural quest and shared a mutual obsession for the material. They experimented with different materials, like dust, plaster, sand, all mixed in a paste that was then applied with a trowel and scraped with different tools. After the second world war, Jean Dubuffet invented the term: 'l'art brut', to reference an art that was completely deprived from any artistic, intellectual or cultural influence. Dubuffet is interested by marginal art, the art of children or the (mentally) ill, which he collects in an effort to fight elitism and intellectual snobbery in art. His art is diverting and cannot be categorized. His main artistic objective is that his art addresses the mind, not the eyes. He is influenced and inspired by anthropology, folklore and psychiatry, created works that go beyond the classical conventions and used materials that were very unusual at the time. « Petit paysage avec personnages » is part of a very rare series: « Paysages grotesques » paint in 1949. It represents four people in an arid landscape. Dubuffet made this work, after his trip to the Sahara. Being so far removed from urbanization and occidental tradition, he is deeply touched by the white sands of Africa and its inhabitants, Dubuffet's work was very much marked by his Saharan experience. His interest in the visual indigenous language was amplified by his discovery of the tribal rituals of the Bedouin people. Incrusted in the surface of the painting, like footprints leaving traces in the sand, his figures became powerful symbols of elementary wisdom. They are cloaked in a primordial mystery of prehistoric ruins, their forms incarnating the primary relationship between man and nature. By using a layer of paste in a clear color, contrasting the somber background, Dubuffet creates the effect of geological layers, from where these figures seem to be exhumated. These odd figures are transformed in strange creatures, imbued in a naivety and infant like innocence. Almost indistinguishable from their surroundings, these four protagonists express the union between figure and landscape. Dubuffet's main objective was to travel and establish relationships outside of the confinement of the traditional art world, disconnecting from the occidental world and the classical artistic traditions.