With approximately 160 prints, paintings, sculptures, painted cutouts, mobiles, costumes, and works on paper, Jean Dubuffet: Trace of an Adventure presents the diverse output of this artist, providing insight into his complex investigations of art outside the conventional dictates of the art world. This exhibition gives a broad picture of Dubuffet’s experimentation with various techniques and of the wide range of his prodigious creative powers.

By placing works from a variety of mediums side by side, Jean Dubuffet: Trace of an Adventure illustrates the defining concerns of this French artist: the celebration of everyday life and an untiring curiosity for materials. This exhibition follows his wishes for a complicated, theoretical approach giving way to a “concept of clarity.” This survey of Dubuffet’s continual innovations and developments does, indeed, depict the Trace of an Adventure: the adventure of painting. In the artist ’s words, “Art’s great mission is to break down the mind’s habit of distinguishing between the two registers that inhibit and snuff out the free play of thought. Once this barrier is removed, thought regains its force and its creative thrust. This is the function of a work of art, and its raison d’être.”