Foreigner (L'Etranger)
Jean Dubuffet
French, 1901–1985
1953
A 1953 lithograph in which Jean Dubuffet depicts a rough, childlike ‘foreigner’—at once grotesque and vulnerable—to push back against polished taste and foreground a raw, outsider sensibility.
The eye is drawn to a squat, mask‑like figure set in a mottled brown rectangular field, its scraped, crusty marks and oddly skewed proportions giving the image a primitive, tactile immediacy.
Part of Dubuffet’s art brut project, this work helped bring a deliberately rough, anti‑academic aesthetic into postwar modernism and demonstrated how printmaking could convey painterly, material effects.
Medium
Lithograph
Dimensions
composition: 6 13/16 x 5 1/2" (17.3 x 14 cm); sheet: 12 15/16 x 9 7/8" (32.9 x 25.1 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph F. Colin
Accession
700.1965
Palette
Exhibitions
