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Lot Essay
Executed in 1962, Personnage des Légendes, (Charcater of the Legends) is the most compelling example of Dubuffet's Personnage series as it illustrates a striking visual energy through a radiant palette in a highly elaborate form.
A tornado of colour conceals a figure who appears will swirl from the two dimensional surface. Repetitive and intersecting shapes are executed with breathtaking speed capturing Dubuffet's omnipresent energy and expression. The curved black thick lines in Personnage des Légendes reappear as contours of organic shapes in the celebrated Hourloupe, yet more fluid, gestural and liberated. The strokes overlap and cross and suggest they have been constructed through an obsession and possession of intricate detail and a wonder for form. It presents one of Dubuffet's finest examples of a rich and saturated palette before red, blue and white become dominant colours in the Hourloupe compositions. The immediacy of the gestures in Personnage des Légendes recalls the incorporation of the 'automatic' impulse of Surrealist drawing influenced by his friends Andre Masson and Max Jacob in Paris in 1948. However it was his affair with Art Brut in 1945 that played the most significant role in the artist's career, allowing him to become the architect of an art that was free of formal prescriptions, a space void of aesthetic heritage. Dubuffet had his first retrospective exhibition at the Musée des Arts décoratifs and became a member of the Collège de 'Pataphysique'. Personnage des Légendes offers another instant of Dubuffet's genius as an artist who perpetually redefines the space of art in hypnotic form and colour that emanates a resilient optimism in humanity.
A tornado of colour conceals a figure who appears will swirl from the two dimensional surface. Repetitive and intersecting shapes are executed with breathtaking speed capturing Dubuffet's omnipresent energy and expression. The curved black thick lines in Personnage des Légendes reappear as contours of organic shapes in the celebrated Hourloupe, yet more fluid, gestural and liberated. The strokes overlap and cross and suggest they have been constructed through an obsession and possession of intricate detail and a wonder for form. It presents one of Dubuffet's finest examples of a rich and saturated palette before red, blue and white become dominant colours in the Hourloupe compositions. The immediacy of the gestures in Personnage des Légendes recalls the incorporation of the 'automatic' impulse of Surrealist drawing influenced by his friends Andre Masson and Max Jacob in Paris in 1948. However it was his affair with Art Brut in 1945 that played the most significant role in the artist's career, allowing him to become the architect of an art that was free of formal prescriptions, a space void of aesthetic heritage. Dubuffet had his first retrospective exhibition at the Musée des Arts décoratifs and became a member of the Collège de 'Pataphysique'. Personnage des Légendes offers another instant of Dubuffet's genius as an artist who perpetually redefines the space of art in hypnotic form and colour that emanates a resilient optimism in humanity.