Exhibition 2025 at the Musée du Niel: Dubuffet and the magicians

For this third exhibition at the Musée du Niel, we have chosen Jean Dubuffet and the Magicians. Jean Dubuffet's artistic contribution and impact at the end of the Second World War were considerable. He "invented" art brut, and gave this hitherto ignored or neglected form of singular expression a wide-ranging exhibition for the first time. At a time when abstraction was establishing its mastery over painting in France, at a time when figurative art was resisting and asserting its traditional strengths, Jean Dubuffet showed that there was an art that escaped the official canons, that eluded the usual channels of established culture; he invented a new source of inspiration, a new way of painting that escaped the main currents of art, and a revolutionary doctrine that shook up certainties. He innovated, destabilized and opened up new perspectives. He opened the way for magic and magicians.