Jean Dubuffet, Paysage avec villa et personnage, 1974

01 October 2025

Painted in 1974, Paysage avec villa et personnage belongs to a pivotal moment in Jean Dubuffet’s oeuvre, during the transition between the final years of the Hourloupe cycle (1962–1974) and the emergence of the Sites tricolores series (1974–1975). Together with the Roman burlesque group, these works embody Dubuffet’s transformation of the radical language of Hourloupe into structured landscapes.

The Hourloupe had begun more than a decade earlier as Dubuffet forged an entirely new visual system—an autonomous world composed of cellular forms and flat fields of red, blue, white and black, all contained within bold black outlines. Over twelve years, this lexicon expanded into painting, sculpture, architecture and even performance. For Dubuffet, this was less a style than a mental universe, dismantling reality in order to reconstruct an alternative one.

By 1974, Dubuffet sought to “reprendre corps et racine”[1] (regain body and root). Paysage avec villa et personnage exemplifies this shift. While the Hourloupe dissolved figures into networks of cells, here a human form and architectural motif re-emerge within the dense fabric of signs. Landscape, building and figure fuse into a vertical field where no hierarchy dominates, yet the eye perceives unstable silhouettes from the mass of forms. This interplay characterises the Sites tricolores, where Dubuffet retained his restricted palette but reinvested it with a new sense of spatial tension.

The artwork’s title showcases Dubuffet’s delight in conflating genres. The villa and the figure are not depicted as discrete subjects, but are instead absorbed into shifting shapes. In this way, the painting extends Dubuffet’s lifelong exploration of “mental landscapes,” where representation becomes a vehicle for thought rather than appearance.

Paysage avec villa et personnage thus marks both continuity and renewal. It stands as a testament to his conviction that art must transcend convention to create a new language of expression.

This artwork will be exhibited in the upcoming exhibition 'Jean Dubuffet: L’Hourloupe et son sillage (1962–1982)' at Opera Gallery in Paris.