Jean Dubuffet

Acquired directly from the artist in 1946

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Paintings by Jean Dubuffet: 1943-1949, January - February 1950, cat. no. 1
New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, April - July 1973, cat. no. 3, p. 43, illustrated
Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Jean Dubuffet, September - December 1973, cat. no. 2
New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, The Early Years 1943 to 1959: An Exhibition of Paintings by Jean Dubuffet, May - June 1978, cat. no. 1, n.p., illustrated
Berlin, Akademie der Künste; Vienna, Museum Moderner Kunst; Cologne, Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle, Dubuffet: Retrospektive, September 1980 - March 1981, cat. no. 1, p. 15, illustrated
Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Jean Dubuffet & Art Brut, November 1986 - March 1987, cat. no. 1, p. 39, illustrated in color
Frankfurt, Kunsthalle Schirn, Jean Dubuffet: 1901-1985, December 1990 - March 1991, cat. no. 15, p. 16, illustrated in color
Saint-Paul, Fondation Maeght, Le Nu au XXe Siècle, July - October 2000, cat. no. 33, p. 163, illustrated in color

James Fitzsimmons, Jean Dubuffet: Brève introduction à son oeuvre, Brussels, 1958, cat. no. 1, illustrated
Max Loreau, ed., Catalogue de Travaux de Jean Dubuffet, Fascicule I: Marionnettes de la Ville et de la Campagne, Paris, 1966, cat. no. 25, p. 50, illustrated

This work is in good condition overall. There is evidence of wear and handling to the edges, resulting in some loss to the paint layer at the corners. The canvas is buckling slightly in the upper left corner and there is scattered hairline craquelure throughout, most prominent in the white areas, as is visible in the catalogue illustration, with some slight cupping to the right edge. The artist has intentionally scraped away some of the upper layer of paint to reveal colors beneath, resulting in some small spots of loss. Most of these appear intentional. The edges of the canvas are taped. The canvas is on its original stretcher and is unlined.Under Ultraviolet light inspection, there is no evidence of restoration. Framed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Sotheby’s is honored to present works from the Collection of the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation. The foundation was established in 1995 by Pierre Matisse’s wife, Maria-Gaetana (Tana) von Spreti Matisse to support programs that advance arts education throughout New York City and award grants to museums and other institutions for cultural pursuits. The Foundation’s impressive collection of 20th century art was acquired from the private collection of Pierre and Tana Matisse.

Pierre Matisse’s gallery had served as a bastion for modern European and Latin American art from 1931 until the late 1980s. Among the leading artists that Matisse championed were Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró and Jean Dubuffet, and the groundbreaking exhibitions of these artists’ works at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in the Fuller Building effectively changed the landscape of avant-garde art in the United States. As the premiere representative of these artists in America, Matisse was instrumental in bringing them to the attention of leading collectors and museums across the country.

The works on offer from the Foundation are those that Pierre and Tana Matisse kept in their private collection, and represent the best of the best from the elite stable of artists that they championed. Giacometti’s Annette IV Nu, Giacometti's Nu debout and Miro's Constellation, being offered in the May 7th Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, along with the present work, Dubuffet's Petit Sergent Major are emblematic of Matisse's discerning eye and impeccable taste. Pierre Matisse had first pick of works from the leading artists of his generation, and through the Foundation that his wife Tana created, these icons of Modern art continue to promote and support the next generation of cultural innovators.

Petit Sergent Major materializes all the insatiable joy and vivacious energy of Jean Dubuffet's interpretation of the visual world around him. Painted in February of 1943, this portrait is one of the most enthralling and enchanting paintings from the opening chapter of the artist's illustrious career. The development of Dubuffet’s mature oeuvre was characterized by a never-ending movement away from the repressive conventions of academic art. His ability to tap into an unrefined vitality that is lost through teaching and discipline undoubtedly made Jean Dubuffet one of the greatest artists to emerge from France in the Twentieth century. The present work marks the beginning of Dubuffet’s impassioned attack on the accepted hierarchies and traditional aspects of fine art which would endure for decades. In this context, Petit Sergent Major should thus be seen as a painting of tremendous historical significance.

After several aborted attempts to devote himself to an artistic career, Dubuffet finally left his family’s wine business in 1942, at the age of 41, to take up painting full time. Dubuffet’s career change came in the midst of the Nazi occupation of war-scarred Paris. His first solo exhibition, held at the Galerie René Drouin on Place Vendôme, wouldn’t come until a few months after the city’s liberation in October 1944. Museum director Fabrice Hergott and art historian Valérie da Costa explain the influence of the war on Dubuffet’s paintings from this period: “The paintings and drawings Dubuffet did during the black years of the German occupation are a kind of exorcism. He invented an uneducated art, characterized by its proclaimed stupidity, totally contrary to the Nazi aesthetic. No matter when a work of art appears, it can allow itself the arrogance of obviously turning its back on its epoch. Through the use of dissonant colors, he managed to turn the most commonplace moments into a sort of colorful adventure.” (Valérie de Costa and Fabrice Hergott, Jean Dubuffert Works, Writings and Interviews, Barcelona 2006, p. 22) After the Second World War Dubuffet was confronted with a deep angst and consumed by the need to rid visual art of its affected heroics and cultural inhibitions. Categorically opposed to "cultivated" art taught in schools and museums, Dubuffet firmly believed that styles and schools hamper rather than train our artistic understanding of the world. He managed to "unteach" himself everything he had learnt while studying painting at the Academie Julian in Paris, and in so doing, rediscovered a potent vision of the world.

He nurtured the concept of art informel, a spontaneous art that rejected any effect of harmony or beauty in a bid to break free of tradition. In addition, his subject matter celebrated the banality of everyday things and people, lifting them to a status of “high art.” One of the most important events which so vitally informed his artistic development was the discovery of the book Bildnerei der Geisteskranken, written by Dr. Hans Prinzhorn, who asserted the aesthetic merits of art by the mentally ill, children and primitive cultures. He would later label this genre Art Brut, and became one of its greatest supporters and collectors. Despite his desire to rid himself of ‘educated’ artistic sensibilities, Dubuffet’s personal instincts were influenced by numerous artists during his formative years, including the paintings of Paul Klee, André Masson and the draughtsmanship of Suzanne Valadon.

The extraordinary surface of Petit Sergent Major is enhanced by the layering of kaleidoscopic hues which erupt across the surface with freshness and intensity. Dubuffet’s sophisticated command of color has a striking resemblance to the legendary paintings and portraiture of Henri Matisse. Dubuffet’s magisterial portrait emerges out of the variegated landscape of paint through faceted slabs of sumptuous color tempered by the frame of bold black lines, undoubtedly inspired by Matisse’s Madame Matisse, La raie verte, in which the structure is bound together only by the meeting of bold, Fauvist colors which create a perfectly balanced asymmetrical compositional grid. As in Matisse’s masterwork portrait, Dubuffet abandons traditions of three-dimensional perspective, volumetric illusion and prescribed color relationships in search of a new kind of art. The bursting color and naïve formal language of Petit Sergent Major harbors wide-ranging connotations from the art of children and the insane, to the haphazard aesthetics of street culture and graffiti. The distinguished art dealer Pierre Matisse, the great artist’s youngest son, later represented Dubuffet in New York. Upon showing his father Dubuffet’s paintings in 1946, Pierre recalled his father saying: “I do not understand what it is all about, but he has an extraordinary sense of color…and it’s a very French sensibility.” (Exh. Cat. New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, 1973, p. 30)

As one of the first examples of Dubuffet’s potential for inventiveness and renewal, Petit Sergent Major anticipates the entire course of his remarkable career. We can see Dubuffet’s changing pictorial priorities in the present work, as well as stylistic similarities which foreshadow later developments in his mature oeuvre. Discussing the development of his visual style, Dubuffet remarks: “All the work that comes from the hands of one person, as long as that artist expresses himself without constraint, will bear a common stamp; and this will, in my opinion, emerge even more clearly when the artist stops worrying about it...it evolves and develops much more when we use it in innumerable different ways.” (the artist’s 1961 “Notes for a television interview” in: Valérie de Costa and Fabrice Hergott, eds., Jean Dubuffet Works, Writings and Interviews, Barcelona 2006, p. 146) While all of Dubuffet’s paintings bear a common stamp, his artistic output was destined to dramatically evolve over time in accordance with his artistic philosophy. The thickness of Dubuffet’s paint application on the present canvas prefaces the thick impasto of his hautes pâte in the coming years, when he started mixing tar, gravel and sand in his paints. The composition of Petit Sergent Major, fully engulfing the frame and extending beyond the reaches of canvas, evokes the compositional structure of Dubuffet’s iconic Corps de Dames, which he began in 1950. The gridding of the background, as well as the compartmentalized musculature of the figure display Dubuffet’s early interest in abstraction through blocking out shapes, which of course developed fully in his Hourloupe paintings of the 1960s. As such, Petit Sergent Major crystallizes a critical moment in the genesis of Jean Dubuffet's remarkable artistic dialect and displays the many technical and aesthetic possibilities that came to occupy his most celebrated oeuvre.