Dubuffet, Jean Philippe Arthur (1901–1985)

French artist. He originated Art Brut, ‘raw or brutal art’, in the 1940s. Inspired by graffiti and children's drawings, he used such varied materials as plaster, steel wool, and straw in his paintings and sculptures to produce highly textured surfaces.

Art brut emerged in 1945 with an exhibition of Dubuffet's own work and of paintings by psychiatric patients and naive, or untrained, artists. His own paintings and sculptural works have a similar quality, primitive and expressive.