Champ de pensee
1959
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
color lithograph
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. N. Richard Miller
Accession Number
1974.114.10
Art Historical Context
Jean Dubuffet's *Champ de pensée* (1959), a vibrant lithograph, captures the French artist's signature raw energy and playful abstraction. Dubuffet, a pioneer of *Art Brut*—or "raw art"—drew inspiration from children's drawings, graffiti, and outsider artists, rejecting polished academic traditions in favor of impulsive, textured forms. Created in the late 1950s, amid post-World War II experimentation, this print reflects his fascination with organic motifs, evoking a "field of thought" (*pensée* meaning both pansy flower and reflection) through bold colors and childlike scribbles. As a litho...
About the Artist
Jean Dubuffet
Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) was a French painter and sculptor born into a prosperous family of wholesale wine merchants in Le Havre. His early life revolved around this bourgeois world, with childhood friendships among writers like Raymond Queneau and Georges Limbour shaping his intellectual circle. In 1918, at age 17, he moved to Paris to study painting at the Académie Julian but departed after jus...