Dark Graces (Grâces ténébreuses) from the portfolio Anarchitect (L'Anarchitecte) from Phenomena (Les Phénomènes)

Jean Dubuffet

1959

A grainy black-and-white lithograph in which Jean Dubuffet conjures shadowy, ambiguous figures and roughened surfaces to oppose polished, academic imagery.

At first glance a soot‑like field of mottled blacks and grays overwhelms the sheet, with faint halos, ghostly profiles and scratches emerging and receding in a rubbed, tactile surface that makes you search for forms.

Part of Dubuffet’s Anarchitect series, this print treats lithography as a means to preserve improvised, material textures and helped push postwar art toward a celebration of roughness, everyday surfaces, and an anti‑bourgeois aesthetic.

Palette

Exhibitions

Painting and Sculpture from the Museum Collection

1964

Dubuffet: Works on Paper

1986

Committed to Print

1988

Modern Drawings

1944