Jean Dubuffet (1901–85) was a French artist who experimented with unconventional materials and techniques in painting, sculpture, and printmaking in order to challenge traditional ideas of beauty, culture, and taste. He started painting at the age of 17, but gave it up at 24 to follow in the footsteps of his family as a wine merchant. He took up painting again in his mid-30s, but quickly abandoned it. In 1942, at the age of 41, Dubuffet returned to artmaking for good. He took what he called an “anticultural” stance, rejecting polished aesthetics and embracing instinct and raw emotion with found textures and natural forms like gravel, foliage, and even tin foil. 

Dubuffet coined the term “art brut” (“raw art”) to describe works created outside mainstream culture by children, outsider artists, and the mentally ill. With help from the Surrealist André Breton, he amassed a significant collection of such works. He later donated the collection to the city of Lausanne, Switzerland. In his own art, Dubuffet constantly innovated. His famous Phenomena series—a set of 362 lithographs—was made with natural and industrial materials and recalls cosmic forms and microscopic elements. Dubuffet’s prolific experimentation and instinct-driven approach positioned him as a groundbreaking force in 20th century art, pushing boundaries across multiple mediums and redefining artistic expression.

Exhibitions and retrospectives of Dubuffet’s work have been organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York; Tate Gallery, London, England; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France, among others. Dubuffet's work is held in numerous prestigious public and private collections around the world, including the aforementioned institutions, as well as the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; Tate Modern, London, England; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; Menil Collection, Houston, Texas; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands; Brodsky Family Collection, New York, New York; Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection, Paris, France; and the Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany, among others. 

Dubuffet’s first solo presentation at GRAY was Théâtres de Mémoire: Scènes Banales in 1979. His work has been featured in various GRAY exhibitions since, including Dubuffet at 80: Recent Works, 1981; Modern and Contemporary Masters, 1992; Selections from the Estate of Mr. and Mrs. Howard Wolfson, 2002; Forty Years, 2003; and GRAY at 60, 2023.