Dubuffet was an example of a genuine art work through the painting of figures.

Dubuffet was born in Le Havre. He moved to Paris in 1918 to study painting at the art Académie Julian, but after six months he left the Académie to study independently. In 1924, doubting the value of art, he stopped painting and took over his father's business selling wine. He took up painting of portrait again in the 1930s, when he made a large series of portraits in which he emphasized the vogues in art history.

The incredible art of painting of portraits that unfold the artist skill in painting.

In 1945 he became strongly impressed by a show in Paris of Jean Fautrier's paintings in which he recognized meaningful art which expressed directly and purely the depth of a person. As did Fautrier he started to use thick oil paint, but mixed with sand and gravel, by which he could model the paint as a skin of the painting. This resulted in the series 'Hautes Pâtes'; he exhibited in 1946 at the Galérie René Drouin. After 1946 he started a series painting of portraits, with as 'model' partly his own friends Henri Michaux, Francis Ponge, Jean Paulhan and Pierre Matisse he painted these portraits in the same thick materials, and deliberately anti-psychological and anti-personal art.

Felt marker and collage on paper
20,1 x 13,7 in (51,2 x 34,9 cm)