Precarite
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
1971.84.39
Art Historical Context
Jean Dubuffet's *Precarite* (1959), a striking color lithograph now housed in the National Gallery of Art's Department of Prints (CG-W), captures the French artist's revolutionary spirit. Dubuffet (1901–1985), founder of the Art Brut movement, championed raw, unrefined expression drawn from children's drawings, graffiti, and outsider art. Rejecting academic polish, his works pulse with primal energy, often exploring the fragility of the human condition—a theme echoed in the title *Precarite*, French for "precarity." Created via lithography, a planographic printing technique prized for its abi...
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...