Beschreibung:

Jean Dubuffet Le Chien Rodeur 1955 oil on canvas 81 x 99.5 cm (31 7/8 x 39 1/8 in) Signed and dated 'J. Dubuffet 55' upper left; further signed, titled and dated 'Vence, août '55' on the reverse.
Provenance Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York Mr. and Mrs. Arthur J. Kobacker Steubenville, Ohio Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 28 October 1970, lot 64 Dr. Irving Stoner (acquiredfrom the above sale) Robert Elkon Gallery, New York (1975) Marisa del Re Gallery, Inc., New York Waddington Galleries, London Mr. and Mrs. George Bloch, Hong Kong Private Collection, Connecticut Sotheby's New York, 'Impressionist & Modern Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture', 8 November 1994, lot 42 Acquiredfrom the above sale Sotheby's New York, 'Collection of Stanley J. Seeger', 8 May 2001, lot 35 Acquired from the above sale by the present owner Exhibited New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Dubuffet Paintings – Assemblages d’Empreintes, 21 February-17 March 1956, no.16 Hannover, Kestner Gesellschaft; Zürich Kunsthaus, Jean Dubuffet 26 October-4 December 1960, no.62 New York, The Museum of Modern Art, The Work of Jean Dubuffet 19 February-8 April 1962, then travelled to The Art Institute of Chicago (11 May-17 June 1962); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (10 July-12 August 1962) London, Tate Gallery, Dubuffet Paintings, 23 April-30 May 1966, no.72 New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Jean Dubuffet 26 April-29 July 1973, then travelled to Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais (27 September-20 December 1973), no. 76 New York, Robert Elkon Gallery, Dubuffet, A Selection, 27 September - 29 October 1975, no.16 Literature Petr Selz, The Work of Jean Dubuffet New York, 1962, p.114 (illustrated) Max Loreau, Catalogue des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet Fascicule XI: Charettes, Jardins, Personnages Monolithes, Lausanne, 1969, no.76, p.64, pl.76 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay This work by the French artist Jean Dubuffet created in 1955, is a superb example of his Paysages of the 1950s. It is also a perfect illustration of his life-long struggle to connect his own art with the profoundest origins of man and earth. Le Chien Rodeur (the prowler dog) exemplifies Dubuffet’s concept of Art Brut: a savage and untamed form of expression which, just as the dog here, wanders through the twists and turns of the human mind bringing to the surface its most primitive and raw essence. Dubuffet’s passion for the tactile qualities of art, its texture and materiality, evolved into the use of materials such as sand, glass, and tar – an awareness of materials that generally characterized the Art Informel movement of the time. Most strikingly, Le Chien Rodeur comprises densely applied layers of paint on canvas, subsequently incised with deep lines, creating a bas-relief in the surface of contoured impasto. This work reveals a unique stylistic continuum in Dubuffet’s œuvre, of conjuring life through carving into or out of his materials. This painting is reminiscent of the artist’s earlier work in high-relief, Pierre brise-loguique (pour exercises philosophiques), 1952, in which abstract forms are interpreted through the opaque strata of oil on canvas, conjuring ancient scenes of chiselled stone or bronze cast. Here, the artist combines sumptuous earth tones with a charming little character, mischievous and amusing. As in many of his Paysage works, Dubuffet populated his canvases with figures and animals alike, inhabiting his paintings with a sense of verve and appreciation for the everyday. Further exploring this theme in his sculptures, aptly titled Petites statues de la vie précaire (Little statues of precarious life), Dubuffet engaged with found materials such as steel wool, charcoal, newspaper, sponges, debris from a burned-out car, and grapevines, in order to create small figures or heads, often endearing, which display a sense of the transitory and sensitivity to their surrounding. Le Chien Rodeur, like the sculptures developed just a year before, embodies the fragility and randomness of life. Dubuffet succeeds in conveying this precariousness along with a vivid sense of the tenacity of his little dog. While the title of the work connotes an action, we find his dog standin