Dubuffet's 'Hourloupe' Unfolds in Full at Dinard

Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) remains a towering figure in 20th-century French art, celebrated for theorizing Art Brut and for an prolific practice spanning painting, sculpture and monumental environments that upended academic hierarchies. Among his most ambitious undertakings is L'Hourloupe, a graphic universe built on black, white, red and blue that he developed over more than a decade until it colonized every medium he worked in, from canvas to sculpted architecture.

In Dinard, an exhibition open this summer and running through the end of September aims to present this cycle in its entirety, bringing together paintings, sculptures and related works from the sprawling universe Dubuffet launched in the early 1960s. The show traces L'Hourloupe's evolution from its earliest, almost playful scribbled sketches to its eventual three-dimensional incarnations, which produced monumental sculptures and utopian architectural projects.

The cycle reportedly began almost by accident, with Dubuffet doodling tangled cellular shapes while on the telephone before systematizing this vocabulary into a recognizable style built from sinuous contours and colored cross-hatching. L'Hourloupe became far more than a series: it structured his entire output between 1962 and 1974, eventually spilling out of the canvas to occupy three-dimensional space in works such as the Jardin d'émail and Groupe de quatre arbres.

By choosing to display the full range of the cycle rather than a limited selection of signature paintings, the Dinard exhibition seeks to demonstrate the coherence and radicalism of Dubuffet's project: a sustained challenge to the boundaries between mediums, driven by an artist who rejected any hierarchy between high art and popular forms. The exhibition, running until late September, forms part of a broader summer program in Brittany that highlights 20th-century French artistic heritage.

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Written by the ADM desk based on Beaux Arts Magazine. Read the original article for the full story.