Jean Dubuffet – Metamorphoses of Landscape

The Fondation Beyeler will open the year 2016 with the first retrospective in Switzerland in the 21st century devoted to the multifaceted, imaginative and brightly colored oeuvre of Jean Dubuffet. The exhibition “Jean Dubuffet – Metamorphoses of Landscape”, which will run from 31 January to 8 May 2016, will feature around 100 works by the French painter and sculptor, who, as a master of experimentation, imparted new impulses to the art scene in the second half of the 20th century. The works on show will include the spectacular multimedia work Coucou Bazar, a space-encompassing installation with partly animated costumes.

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) is one of the defining artists of the second half of the 20th century. Stimulated by the work of artists on the margins of the cultural scene, Dubuffet succeeded in liberating himself from traditions and in reinventing art. Dubuffet’s influence can still be felt today in contemporary art and street art, for example in the work of David Hockney, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.

In the first large-scale Jean Dubuffet retrospective in Switzerland this century, the Fondation Beyeler presents the artist’s richly faceted, complex and multilayered oeuvre on the basis of some 100 works. The exhibition focuses on Dubuffet’s fascinating idea of landscape, which in his hands can transform itself into a body, a face or an object. The artist experimented in his works with new techniques and materials, such as sand, butterfly wings, sponges and slag, thereby creating a wholly individual and unique visual universe.

Alongside important paintings and sculptures from all the major phases of the artist’s oeuvre, the exhibition is also showing Dubuffet’s spectacular Coucou Bazar, a multimedia work of art combining painting, sculpture, theatre, dance and music.

The exhibition will be showing works from important international museums and private collections. It is generously supported by the Fondation Dubuffet in Paris. Amongst many others, significant exhibits come from the Guggenheim in New York; the Centre Pompidou, the Fondation Louis Vuitton and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in Paris; the National Gallery, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Moderna Museet in Stockholm; the Museum Ludwig in Cologne; the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe; the Kunsthaus Zürich and many more.