HISTORY

Convinced as he was that madness was a source of creative fecundity, Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) set out to look for art unfettered by cultural and/or social conditioning. In 1945 he began assembling a collection of "Art Brut," a term he himself invented and defined at the time. To his eye, such creation on the fringes of society represented "a totally pure and raw artistic operation entirely reinvented in all its phases through only its creator's own impulses."  In 1964, he launched the publication of the Art Brut booklets: he himself composed the first eight editions of a series that continues to this day. He donated his collection to the City of Lausanne in 1971: at the time, it comprised 5000 works by 133 creators. The Collection de l'Art Brut opened to the public on February 26th, 1976.

For more detailed information : see the Collection de l’Art Brut Chronology