Vue extérieure de la Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne (Suisse) The missions of the Art Brut Collection
The museum
Missions

The missions of the Art Brut Collection

Heir to the Art Brut collection created in 1945 by Jean Dubuffet and an international reference in the field, the Collection of Art Brut contributes to the promotion of the City of Lausanne and the Canton of Vaud in Switzerland and abroad. The world’s first publicly‑status Art Brut collection, it has forged strong links with parent institutions devoted to this non‑conformist form of expression and has developed a network that fosters exchange, emulation, and collaboration.

Definition of Art Brut by Jean Dubuffet

“ By this we mean [Art Brut] works carried out by people free from artistic culture, in which mimicry, unlike what happens among intellectuals, has little or no part, so that their authors draw everything (subjects, choice of materials used, means of transposition, rhythms, ways of writing, etc.) from their own core and not from the clichés of classical art or fashionable art. We are witnessing an artistic operation that is entirely pure, raw, reinvented in all its phases by its author, based solely on his own impulses. Thus art in which only the function of invention manifests, and not those, constant in cultural art, of the chameleon and the monkey.”

Jean Dubuffet, taken from Art Brut Preferred to Cultural Arts, Paris, René Drouin Gallery, 1949.

Jean Dubuffet, Michel Thévoz et Slavo Kopac, 1976

The Art Brut Collection is committed to having Art Brut recognized and valued.

The museum now holds more than 70,000 works by 1,000 female and male authors. The Collection of Art Brut bears the historic responsibility of collecting, preserving, and exhibiting the works in its collection. Nearly 700 are on permanent display in the rooms of the Château de Beaulieu, which was specially renovated in 1976 over four floors to house the creations featured in the museum’s collections. It welcomes audiences of all ages and backgrounds to raise awareness of Art Brut.

Its main actions focus on:

  • a considerable enrichment of the collections,
  • reference monographic or thematic temporary exhibitions,
  • the publication of catalogues or monographs and the production of documentary films,
  • collaborations and loans of works, at the national and international level.

The Collection of Art Brut is exhibited around the world

Association of Friends of Art Brut (AAAB)

The Association of Friends of Art Brut

The Collection of Art Brut continues its mission through the discovery, study, and preservation of these dissident creations. It is actively supported in its various activities by the Association of Friends of Art Brut (AAAB).

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aaab marseille Association of Friends of Art Brut (AAAB)