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Tall, narrow, black building fronts fill this abstracted, horizontal painting. Partitions separating the buildings extend above the rooflines, and those, along with low domes atop some of the buildings, brush the top edge of the canvas. The narrow band of sky between the flat rooflines and the top of the composition is filled with cream-white paint, applied heavily in thick strokes. The buildings are painted with wide, horizontal strokes of black paint. The outlines of doors, windows, and the brick partitions between the buildings were incised into wet paint to delineate those features. Some of the outlines are also streaked with cobalt blue, butter yellow, brick red, and plum purple. Six people with oversized, round, peach-colored heads on spindly black bodies look out at us from windows across the composition. Cartoon-like eyes, noses, and smiling mouths are incised into wet paint. Along the bottom level, the buildings are numbered 78, 80, 82, and 84. Signs, also incised in wet, black paint to reveal white outlines, appear over the doors. The leftmost building reads “OPTICIEN” above “Leroy.” The next store is “PARFUMS,” then “MODES,” “Coiffeur,” “JOURNEAX,” “PRIMEURS,” and “BAR.” Under “PRIMEURS,” a sign on the store front reads “FRUITS ET LEGUMES.” Two people walk along the street, at the bottom of the canvas. One is to our left of center and stands facing us, smiling. The other is to our right, also smiling as he walks to our left in profile.

Jean Dubuffet

Façades d'immeubles (Building Façades), 1946

East Building, Upper Level - Gallery 407A

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 151 x 202 cm (59 7/16 x 79 1/2 in.)

framed: 151.8 x 201.9 x 3.2 cm (59 3/4 x 79 1/2 x 1 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of the Stephen Hahn Family Collection

Accession Number

1995.30.3

Artists / Makers

Jean Dubuffet (painter) French, 1901 - 1985

Image Use

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Inscription

right center reverse: J. Dubuffet / juillet 46

Provenance

The artist; (Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York); purchased 9 March 1950 by Mr. and Mrs. Ralph F. Colin, New York;[1] (their sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, 10 May 1995, no. 60); Stephen Hahn, Santa Barbara, California; gift (partial and promised) 1995 to NGA; gift completed 2012.

[1] The early provenance information is given in the 1960 exhibition catalogue and the 1995 sale catalogue.

Associated Names

Hahn, Stephen

Exhibition History

1950: Paintings by Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1950, no. 13.

1959: Jean Dubuffet Retrospective Exhibition 1943-1949, Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1959, no. 16a, repro.

1960: The Colin Collection. Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture collected by Mr. and Mrs. Ralph F. Colin, Pamela T. Colin & Ralph F. Colin, Jr., New York, M. Knoedler & Company, New York, 1960, no. 93, repro., as Grande Vue de Paris.

1966: Dubuffet, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, June-August 1966, no. 14, repro.

1966: Jean Dubuffet: paintings, Tate Gallery, London, April-May 1966, no. 19, repro. (organized by the Arts Council of Great Britain).

1980: Dubuffet Retrospective, Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna; Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle, Cologne, 1980-1981, no. 49, repro.

2016: Jean Dubuffet: Metamorphoses of Landscape, Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 2016, unnumbered catalogue, repro.