£250.00

Paris: Galerie René Drouin. 1949.

First edition. 201x170mm. Unpaginated. pp. [52]. Beige card wrappers with the title printed on the upper cover. Stapled at the spine. Printed on coloured paper and illustrated throughout with fifty two reproductions of the works shown in this celebrated exhibition of Art Brut organised by the Compagnie de l'Art Brut at Galerie Rene Drouin in Paris where Dubuffet had his first exhibition.
Art Brut was a term coined by Jean Dubuffet to describe art that broke away from the art school and drew on influences such as graffiti, tribal art, children's art and the work of psychiatric patients. Art Brut is often translated as "raw art" or "rough art" but it probably makes more sense to call it "outsider art" (the term used by the art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972) in recognition of its engagement with unconventional, disturbing and non-traditional forms and influences. The catalogue (which, appropriately, has something of the home-made about it) is perhaps most celebrated now for Dubuffet's introductory essay which served as a manifesto for the Art Brut group.
"Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses – where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere – are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professionals. After a certain familiarity with these flourishings of an exalted feverishness, lived so fully and so intensely by their authors, we cannot avoid the feeling that in relation to these works, cultural art in its entirety appears to be the game of a futile society, a fallacious parade".