
Profusion de l'être
1984
Created in Dubuffet's signature Art Brut style, *Profusion de l'être* presents a densely packed, labyrinthine network of sinuous lines and fragmented forms rendered in acrylic on paper laid on canvas. The composition teems with an almost chaotic abundance of interlocking figures and shapes, evoking a sense of boundless, teeming existence. True to Dubuffet's philosophy of rejecting refined aesthetic traditions, the work celebrates raw, unpolished energy and the overwhelming multiplicity of being.
- Medium
- acrylic on paper laid on canvas
- Dimensions
- Signed
- Yes
- Spotted At
- Auction House · Christie's
Notes
LITERATURE M. Loreau, Catalogue des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet, Fascicule XXXVII : Non-lieux, Lausanne, 1989, pp. 98 et 100, No. 92 (illustré p. 41). M. Paquet, Dubuffet, Paris, 1993, p. 371, No. 357 (illustré p. 241). EXHIBITED Paris, Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Jean Dubuffet: Non-lieux, septembre-novembre 1987 (illustré en couleurs au catalogue d'exposition n.p.). Conditions of sale Brought to you by Elisabetta Vitullo Junior Specialist, Head of Day Sale EVITULLO@CHRISTIES.COM +33 (0)1 40 76 85 68
🔨 Auction Lot
Art Contemporain
Lot 212
More by Jean Dubuffet
Artists in conversation

Karel Appel
Dutch · b. 1921

Appel shared Dubuffet's commitment to raw, childlike figuration with dense interlocking forms and vivid acrylic color fields. His late works on paper and canvas display the same crowded, energetic accumulation of abstracted figures that characterizes Profusion de l'être.

Asger Jorn
Danish · b. 1914

Jorn created densely packed, interlocking figurative abstractions in vibrant acrylics with the same chaotic yet rhythmic teeming of forms seen in this piece. His surfaces bristle with the same CoBrA influenced primitivism and compulsive layering that Dubuffet pursued in his late Hourloupe and post Hourloupe works.

Philip Guston
American · b. 1913

Guston's late figurative paintings share the cartoonish, chunky, proliferating forms rendered in flat bold color that fill this work. Both artists rejected refined abstraction in favor of crude accumulations of interlocked symbolic shapes that feel simultaneously playful and cosmologically dense.
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