Swiss art brut : the Collection from its origins to the present day

Although the Collection de l'Art Brut is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in February 2026, the notion of Art Brut first emerged in the middle of the twentieth century. This was when Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985), in parallel with his own artistic practice, found his curiosity piqued by an art that was accessible not through the official channels of the art world but on its fringes, which he eagerly started to explore.

The term Art Brut' came to him in the summer of 1945, in relation to a preliminary inquiry he made in Switzerland, where in particular he visited asylum seekers and ethnographic collections and sought works created by inmates in psychiatric hospitals and prisons. During this trip, Dubuffet talked to doctors, artists, and museum directors, who would play an essential role in the development of the new concept of Art Brut and in forming the core of the collection he then set about creating. As his thinking developed, and in light of the fruitful discoveries he made, first in Switzerland, then in France, and later in other countries, Jean Dubuffet, the first exponent of Art Brut, established its fundamental principles. Switzerland thus served as a catalyst for the development of the concept of Art Brut, which allowed its originator to introduce works by self-taught artists into the art world, but at the same time call into question art and its definitions as the world emerged from the Second World War.

By taking Switzerland as its central theme, this jubilee exhibition and its accompanying book - titled Swiss Art Brut : The Collection from its Origins to the Present Day - also aim to draw attention to the close and enduring links that existed between Dubuffet and Switzerland, an attachment that would culminate in the artist offering his collection to the City of Lausanne in 1971 in order to ensure its preservation and presentation to the public.

The exhibition offers a selection of more than three hundred works - drawings, paintings, sculptures, embroideries, writings, assemblages - created during different periods across the history of the Lausanne museum's collection. Some stem from the collection inherited from Jean Dubuffet, which he built up from 1945 onwards ; others have entered the Collection de l'Art Brut between 1976 - the year it opened - and 2025. Each body of work is unique and reflects the singular forms of expression imagined by the self-taught artists represented, none of whom had been expected to devote themselves to artistic creation. Certain themes and motifs characteristic of Swiss imagery are employed : for example, the country's natural environment, its architecture, mountains and trains, and not forgetting its cows, animals that Dubuffet had himself painted during his youth, and which he consequently chose to emphasise. It is this subversion of values and fertile artistic freedom, championed and promoted by Dubuffet in opposition to officially sanctioned art, that these Art Brut creations powerfully illustrate.