Dark Graces (Grâces ténébreuses) from the portfolio Anarchitect (L'Anarchitecte) from Phenomena (Les Phénomènes)
Jean Dubuffet
French, 1901–1985
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.
Medium
One from a portfolio of ten lithographs
Dimensions
composition: 18 9/16 x 14 3/8" (47.1 x 36.5 cm); sheet: 25 1/8 x 17 11/16" (63.8 x 45 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph F. Colin
Accession
746.1965.8
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
