Jean Dubuffet was the most important figurative artist to emerge in Paris after WWII. Following an unsuccessful career in his family's wine business, he turned decisively to art at the age of 41. For the next forty years, in addition to becoming a prolific painter and sculptor, he created some fifteen hundred original prints, many for illustrated books. With no formal training, he clashed with prevailing notions of culture and taste, preferring the spontaneous energy of graffiti and the art of children and the mentally ill. He believed that intellectuals were the enemies of art and strove to disassociate himself with the labels that had described previous art movements of the early 20th century. Ultimately he created a style of his own. L'Art Brut, depicting simple, organic portraits and abstract, textural imagery reminiscent of primitive cave paintings.

Dubuffet began original printmaking early in the 1940s, mainly lithographs and woodcuts which were often grouped together in albums for which he also occasionally provided text. The portfolio Vignettes Lorgnettes illustrates the creativity and charm of Dubuffet's early endeavors. Working directly on his kitchen table, with his wife as his printer's assistant, he assembled an odd collection of printing plates: Camembert cheese boxes, shoe polish tins, scrap wood from old crates, and discarded linoleum tiles. Gouging and scraping directly onto these 'plates', he created a collection of whimsical and captivating people, landscapes and animals engaged in activities that seemed irrational, given his flattened perspectives, crude drawing, and unexpected juxtapositions.

Dubuffet's romance with lithography revolutionized the medium and is one of the most important milestones in the history of the printmaking. His endless experimentation with surface texture is evident in his first important project Matière et Mémoire, 1944-45, in which he scratched the lithographic stones with sandpaper, rubbed them with rags, and used other unconventional materials to achieve the varied effects. His unorthodox approach reached its zenith between 1957 and 1962 with the series Les Phénomènes. Here, he created an alternate reality that seems to capture the dynamic forces of nature. Changing the established technique of drawing on the stone with a crayon or brush into an improvisational event, he sought the effects of chance and accident by impressing natural materials of every kind -- dirt, fruit peelings, leaves, debris on the stones' surfaces -- dragging burning rags and spilling chemicals onto them, achieving unusual and outstanding results. He went on to cut up many of the Les Phénomènes compositions, reassembling these elements into his most iconic graphic works, Nez Carrote and Personnage au Costume Rouge.

In the final phase of his career, Dubuffet formed an ambiguous universe through the imagery of the Hourloupe cycle. The invented word signified a schematic, elegant form of grafitti reminiscent of colorful curvilinear puzzles. This radical shift in style was discovered accidentally, while the artist was doodling. Undefined creatures and groups of figures appear and disappear within densely packed, agitated masses, hidden in a maze of thick lines and patchwork quilt of red, blue and striped areas. Samedi Tantôt and Affairements are the most important prints from the Hourloupe cycle, depicting a graphic intensity not seen in his previous work. To Dubuffet they reveal a fantastical and demented climate with no references to specific objects or locales.

During the first half of the 20th Century, profound changes in the appearance and meaning of 'modern' art created an exciting, frightening and constantly evolving climate in which artists struggled to innovate and thrive. Though Dubuffet was fairly effective in avoiding significant influence by other artists and art movements that preceded him, the radical changes taking place in virtually every aspect of life inspired him to make his own indelible mark on the history of art and culture. The tenacity and creative output of other artistic visionaries like Braque, Chagall, Matisse, Miro and especially Picasso, opened the door for Dubuffet to emerge as one of the most revolutionary and successful artists of the modern era.