Jean DUBUFFET - Le Libre Echange, 1974 - Serigraph

Screen print : Screen printing, also known as silkscreen, serigraphy, and serigraph printing - from latin "Sericum (silk) and greek "grapheion" (writing) - is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil to receive a desired image. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image into a substrate. It is possible to use different meshes, for different colors, and create multi-colored works. In the field of art, it is important to know how many prints have been made. The total number of prints is usually written on the print (e.g 20/200).
Jean Dubuffet : (1901-1985), a French painter and sculptor, was a mjor artist of the 20th century. He is the inventor of a style he himself coined "Art Brut" (Literally Raw Art, known as Outsider Art in English), and which is today one of the most scrutinised by collectors. He is certainly one of the most famous French artist of his generation, in France and abroad. Originally from Le Havre, Jean Dubuffet studied at the Fine Art academy of his hometown, which also welcomed Georges Braque, Othon Friesz or Raoul Dufy. He then studied at the Jullian Academy in Paris, before he settled in his own studio, in order to prevent academism for conformism from restraining his creative ideas. He looked for his path for several years, travelling, studying literature, music and languages, and alternating with some time in managing a small business, he finally decided to dedicate himself fully to painting in the 1940's. As a self-taught man, and encouraged by his endless curiosity, he started getting interrested in "non cultural" Art, such as art made by mentally ill people or untrained artists, and he found in them a new way of expression, he let appear through his own "deconditioning". His first personal exhibition took place at the René Drouin gallery in Paris in 1944, and was followed by numerous exhibitiions around the world, which scandalised at the sime time as they fascinated the public... He settled in New York in the early 1950's, where his works inspired new generations of artists. Dubuffet was constantly developping new ways of expressing himself with the pictural matter, in such a way that people see in himself a "second Picasso". From 1966, Dubuffet really started to make works in volume, and received numerous private and public orders from France to the United-States, where stand several of his monumental sculptures, in New York or in Philadelphia. Dubuffet was the first theoretician of "Art Brut", and its biggest collector. Many Art movement drew inspiration from his work. The Outsider art movement, very trendy today, could really have its roots in Dubuffet... His works are conserved in a lot of public institutions and museums in France and in Europe, but also and particularly in USA (Moma, Guggenheim, MET, Washington National Gallery…), where his mark is still very much present.