Artwork Page for Figure from the "Legends" Series

Details / Information for Figure from the "Legends" Series

Figure from the "Legends" Series

1962

Jean Dubuffet

(French, 1901–1985)
Culture
France, 20th century
Medium
brush and black ink, watercolor, and gouache
Support
White wove paper
Measurements
Sheet: 50 x 33.3 cm (19 11/16 x 13 1/8 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Mrs. Henry Blazy 1977.51
Copyright
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print

Description

The obsessive repetition of forms and phantasmagoric polychrome apparitions in his Legends series in 1961–62 prefigured Dubuffet’s Hourloupe cycle that began in 1962 and occupied the artist for the next 12 years. While doodling at the telephone, Dubuffet created the cool, anonymous idiom he identified as the Hourloupe, in which the compositions consist of pockets of intense colors framed by firm black lines. The effect is of a jigsaw puzzle-like mosaic of tightly interlocking cellular forms. Dubuffet’s concern was not to show objects as they might appear in the world but completely flat expressions of the irrational or pre-logical mind. With his Hourloupes, Dubuffet effectively created his own distinct language: a world of fantasy and grotesque figures and shapes that belong only to him.

Figure from the "Legends" Series

1962

Jean Dubuffet

(French, 1901–1985)
France, 20th century

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