George Noël /Jean Dubuffet

To celebrate the centenary of the artist’s birth, with the support of Margit Rowell and the artist’s family, the gallery is proposing a combination that is as obvious as it is original, bringing together some twenty paintings by Georges Noël, exhibited alongside historic works by the painter Jean Dubuffet.

Intuitively conceived, the exhibition is divided into four sections, allowing for some chronological overlap, but also recalling the historical roots of this dialogue: Georges Noël invented his own pictorial language by first confronting that of Jean Dubuffet.

In 1956, Georges Noël set up his first Parisian studio at 89, rue de Vaugirard, in the flat of Sibyle Boffard, who had some of Jean Dubuffet’s paintings hanging there, and whose friend she was.

The encounter with this work was decisive in the personal development of the young painter, who first confronted it through what he called ‘stylistic exercises’. Georges Noël was quick to recognise that Jean Dubuffet ‘understood everything’ because ‘his vehicle is substance’.