CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/6/2016

Art Brut in America: The Incursion of Jean Dubuffet

"Pâûlîchinêle gânsthêrs vitrês’-he [sic] (Punchinello gangsters vitrês’-he)" was produced by Gaton Duf (aka Gaston Dufour) at Saint-André-lez-Lille Psychiatric Hospital in 1949. One of dozens of outstanding works featured in the American Folk Art Museum's Art Brut in America—presenting works from the noted outsider art collection of French painter Jean Dubuffet—it was made with colored pencils supplied by Duf's doctor after he discovered strange drawings, made in the margins of newspapers, in the linings of his patient's clothes. According to the catalogue, "Dufour began to make larger-format compositions with recurrent subjects of a puppet and a strange, protean creature that he called a rhinoceros; he spelled the word differently each time he drew the animal."