Esprit de terre 1959

Jean Dubuffet made this earthy print, Esprit de terre, by embracing a kind of radical texture and rawness. You can almost feel him relishing the nitty-gritty of the materials, getting his hands dirty, so to speak. What I love is the way Dubuffet builds up the surface, not with smooth, careful strokes, but with a kind of brutal honesty. The ink isn't precious, it's splattered, scraped, and smeared across the paper, creating this incredible depth. There’s a section on the left where the dark ink has almost completely obscured any sense of a ground. It’s like staring into the depths of the earth itself, that title is no accident. He's in conversation with the likes of Kurt Schwitters, another artist who wasn't afraid to get messy and make art from the stuff of everyday life, embracing chance and accident. This print is a reminder that art isn't always about perfection, it's about the messy, beautiful process of creation itself.