Barbe des combats (Combat Beard)
1959
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 81 x 100 cm (31 7/8 x 39 3/8 in.) framed: 108 x 126.4 x 4.4 cm (42 1/2 x 49 3/4 x 1 3/4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Department
CMC
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of the Stephen Hahn Family Collection
Accession Number
1995.95.2
Art Historical Context
Jean Dubuffet's *Barbe des combats (Combat Beard)* (1959) is a dynamic oil on canvas painting measuring 81 x 100 cm, now housed in the National Gallery Art as a gift from Stephen Hahn Family Collection. in the vibrant postwar era, this work captures the French artist's fascination with raw, unrefined expression during his mature period. Dubuffet, a pioneer of *Art Brut*—art by self-taught creators free from cultural constraints—painted figures and forms that pulse with primal energy, often using thick impasto to mimic weathered textures like cracked earth or urban graffiti. The title evokes a...
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...