Paysage aux oiseaux

Painted in August 1951, Paysage aux oiseaux is one of Dubuffet's celebrated "Mental Landscapes". These are a small series of paintings executed between 1950 and 1951 that explore through highly material means the immaterial quality of man's imagination. They are formed by a mortar-like paste that was made out of a number of varying materials that included oil paint, sand, plaster, varnish, zinc oxide and carbonised lime, which was then scrubbed, scraped and scratched by the artist into a vibrant living surface. Long thought of as ranking amongst Dubuffet's finest work, the 'landscape' paintings of these years are the culmination of Dubuffet's aim to interact with what he believed was the inherently animate nature of his materials.

'The pictures done in 1950 and 1951 are closely linked' wrote Dubuffet, 'like all my works of these last years, to the specific behaviour of the material used, and, if you will, to its disposition of an animal, for I should say right off that I see no great difference (metaphysically, that is) between the paste I spread and a cat, a trout or a bull. My paste is a being as these are...' (J. Dubuffet, translated by the artist Exh. cat., J. Dubuffet & M. Duchamps, Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York 1952.)