Jean Dubuffet, Pace Gallery

Referred to as the 'darling of Parisian avant-garde circles,' Jean Dubuffet (1901 - 1985) was an innovator of postwar European painting.

Dubuffet's interest in art brut, otherwise known as outsider art made by the self-taught, led him to emulate its characteristic rough, untutored style in his own work. He regularly painted with strong, unbroken colours, recalling the Fauvist palette, as well as that of the German Brucke collective.

Following a successful exhibition organised by art dealer Pierre Matisse in 1947, Dubuffet's fame sky rocketed, and his art became as sought after as that by Picasso, Matisse and Braque. The painter turned sculptor enjoyed a prolific and successful art career, both in Europe and in America, and is today represented in prestigious private and public collections around the world. With a renewed interest in post-war art, Dubuffet's work is as popular as ever – L'Homme au Papillon sold earlier this year for multiple millions at Sotheby's.



Jean Dubuffet, Site avec auto, 1979, ©ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2017

This autumn, Pace Gallery London will present Jean Dubuffet’s Theatres of memory paintings – a series of monumental oil on canvases made between 1975 and 1978 – for the first time in over three decades. Made from an inventory of cut-out paintings and drawings – large and small, figurative and abstract, natural and architectural – each painting is a panoramic assemblage that brings together memories of sites and scenes from the artist’s mind.

This non-selling exhibition marks 50 years of Pace representing Dubuffet – the artist left his longtime dealer Pierre Matisse in 1967 to sign on with Pace's founder Arne Glimcher – and follows Pace’s tradition of staging landmark exhibitions on the artist.

With works on loan from prestigious private and public collections around the world – some never seen before in public – this calibre of exhibition is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.