In 1969, Gordon Bunshaft, the principal designer for Skidmore Owings & Merrill, proposed the idea of a grand outdoor sculpture for the plaza of his new Chase Manhattan Bank Building in downtown Manhattan to his friend, Jean Dubuffet. Bunshaft had known and championed Dubuffet's work in America for twenty-five years. Their collaboration resulted in one of the finest, most celebrated outdoor sculptures in the United States, the Four Trees, which was erected in 1972.

In his dedication speech, Dubuffet said: "I would like to express my gratitude to the prominent architect Gordon Bunshaft, who was one of the first people in America, twenty-five years ago, to be interested in my works, and who has since always been favorably attached to it. He had that adventurous idea to suggest to Mr. [David] Rockefeller and his advisers to approach me in order to conceive and construct a monument that he wished to see built on that square as a finishing touch to his admirable architecture," op. cit., p. XVIII.