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Lot Essay
Created in 1942 – the seminal year that Jean Dubuffet decided to devote his life to art – Trois femmes nues au bois (Three nude women in the woods) is a visionary early gouache that captures the birth of his practice. The sixteenth work documented in the artist’s catalogue raisonné, it belongs to the inaugural series of female nudes with which he took his first steps into the art world. Working in Nazi-occupied Paris during the Second World War, Dubuffet sought an art that made a total break with tradition. This quest sparked an enduring fascination with what he termed ‘art brut’: namely, imagery produced outside the confines of Western schooling, including pictures by children, patients in mental health institutions and remote tribal cultures. Throughout his career, which culminated in the 1960s with his groundbreaking cycles Paris Circus and l’Hourloupe, Dubuffet sought to infuse his practice with these lessons, embracing intuitive draughtsmanship, exaggerated forms and rudimentary palettes. Stripped bare before the viewer, the three naked protagonists of the present work emerge from the primordial forest like prophets of this new style, their gaze raw and direct. For forty-six years, the work was held in the collection of Dubuffet’s great friend Georges Limbour: a Surrealist poet who was one of the artist’s most important early champions. It was acquired by Jeremy Lancaster in 1996, and was subsequently exhibited at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
The story of Dubuffet’s early rise to acclaim owes much to his friendship with Limbour. The two had been close since childhood, having attended the Lycée François 1er in Le Havre from 1908, and would become key supporters of one another’s work. It was Limbour who accompanied Dubuffet to the Académie Julien in Paris in 1918, where the latter made his first tentative bid to become an artist. Over the next twenty years, Dubuffet would attempt to renew this ambition on various occasions, but each time found himself drawn back to his family’s wine business. It was not until 1942, in the midst of war, that he vowed once and for all to dedicate himself to his true passion. Once again, Limbour proved instrumental, producing the first pieces of writing on Dubuffet’s work and introducing him to important members of the Parisian art world. Chief among these was Jean Paulhan, former editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française, who Limbour invited to the artist’s studio. Through Paulhan, Dubuffet met the gallerist René Drouin, with whom he mounted his now-legendary first solo exhibition in 1944. The show sparked controversy in the press, yet Limbour was quick to defend the artist’s work, hailing a revolutionary new approach that ‘inflames the imagination, is invigorating and dazzling’ (G. Limbour, quoted in Comoedia, Paris, 8 July 1944). Over time, this sentiment would come to define critical commentary on the artist. The present work, gifted to Limbour that year, stands as a testament to the friendship, camaraderie and shared aesthetic vision that helped to launch one of the twentieth century’s most extraordinary artistic practices.
The story of Dubuffet’s early rise to acclaim owes much to his friendship with Limbour. The two had been close since childhood, having attended the Lycée François 1er in Le Havre from 1908, and would become key supporters of one another’s work. It was Limbour who accompanied Dubuffet to the Académie Julien in Paris in 1918, where the latter made his first tentative bid to become an artist. Over the next twenty years, Dubuffet would attempt to renew this ambition on various occasions, but each time found himself drawn back to his family’s wine business. It was not until 1942, in the midst of war, that he vowed once and for all to dedicate himself to his true passion. Once again, Limbour proved instrumental, producing the first pieces of writing on Dubuffet’s work and introducing him to important members of the Parisian art world. Chief among these was Jean Paulhan, former editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française, who Limbour invited to the artist’s studio. Through Paulhan, Dubuffet met the gallerist René Drouin, with whom he mounted his now-legendary first solo exhibition in 1944. The show sparked controversy in the press, yet Limbour was quick to defend the artist’s work, hailing a revolutionary new approach that ‘inflames the imagination, is invigorating and dazzling’ (G. Limbour, quoted in Comoedia, Paris, 8 July 1944). Over time, this sentiment would come to define critical commentary on the artist. The present work, gifted to Limbour that year, stands as a testament to the friendship, camaraderie and shared aesthetic vision that helped to launch one of the twentieth century’s most extraordinary artistic practices.