Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985)

Energised strokes of red, yellow and blue coalesce into an excited vortex in Jean Dubuffet’s Mire G 90 (Kowloon). Channelling the artist’s lifelong preoccupation with graffiti, the painting flickers with quixotic gestures and lines, redolent with an expressive force. Painted in 1983, during the last years of the artist’s life, the present work is part of Dubuffet’s series Mires (Test Patterns), his penultimate visual triumph in a ceaseless quest to broaden the definitions of art; works from the series became part of his contribution to the 1984 Venice Biennale. Reflecting upon his all-encompassing, comprehensive vision, Dubuffet said, 'I want to free myself from the old nomenclature that I was led to believe catalogued reality. I want to transport my vision of what is around us in a different register, I want to live in an alternative reality' (J. Dubuffet quoted in M. Loreau, Catalogue of Works by Jean Dubuffet, issue XXXVI: Mires, Paris, 1988, p. 98). Indeed, Mire G 90 (Kowloon) embodies this sense of boundlessness, untethered from the banal associations of what Dubuffet believed to be a rigid visual language. Writing after the artist’s death in 1985, critic John Russel defined his work as ‘an aesthetic of continual change’ (J. Russell, ‘Jean Dubuffet, Painter and Sculptor, Is Dead’, New York Times, 15 May 1985). It is an evolution which continues to fascinate and will be the subject of a retrospective at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, in 2020. Released from the confines of representation, in the colours of Mire G 90 (Kowloon) exists a sense of regeneration and renewal.