Vache (Cow)
1954
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gouache and oil on wove paper
Dimensions
overall: 43 x 47 cm (16 15/16 x 18 1/2 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of the Stephen Hahn Family Collection
Accession Number
1995.29.20
Art Historical Context
Jean Dubuffet's *Vache (Cow)* (1954) captures the artist's playful yet profound fascination with the raw, unpolished essence of life. Created during a pivotal phase of his career, this gouache and oil work on wove paper measures a modest 43 x 47 cm, blending the vibrant opacity of gouache with the rich texture of oil to evoke a childlike simplicity. Dubuffet, a leading figure in the Art Brut movement—which celebrated intuitive, outsider art free from academic conventions—rendered the cow in bold, earthy forms and scribbled lines, stripping away anatomical precision for a visceral, almost humor...
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...