When Jean Dubuffet (French 1901-85) began his L’Hourloupe series in 1962, he was 61 years old and already had a successful 20-year career behind him as the founder of Art Brut. While much of his earlier work centred around heavily textured painting in an abstract expressionist style, this new style marked a total departure. Drawing was the essence of this new series, focusing on clean white or black grounds, crisp lines and passages of pure, bold colour in red and white.

Dubuffet’s L’Hourloupe series came to dominate his art for the next several decades, and became his most enduring style. The self-titled series began by simple doodles using black, blue & red ballpoint pens whilst talking to a friend on the phone. He was so impressed by the spontaneous movement & flowing energy, Dubuffet wrote the following about the series: “The works connected with the Hourloupe cycle are linked closely to one another in my mind – each of them is an element intended for insertion into a whole. That whole aims to be the depiction of a world unlike ours, a world parallel to ours, if you like; and this world bears the name L’Hourloupe.”