Son of a prosperous wine merchant, Dubuffet studied art in Paris, but left school after a mere six months. He had grown skeptical of the artist's special status in society, and abandoned painting in 1924 to work first in a factory and then in his father's wine business. After ten years, he returned to painting, hoping to erase artistic traditional boundaries and achieve an immediacy and vitality of expression not found in self-conscious, academic art. He became best known for making simple, rough images on heavily encrusted canvas, taking inspiration from what he saw as the uncomplicated, violent energy the art of children, tribal people, and the insane. He coined the term Art Brut ("raw art") to describe his painting of this period, but his style changed often. The red, black, white and blue sculptures and paintings of his later years such as L'Enquêteur (roughly, The Questioner) are more repetitive in pattern and lighter in spirit, although the lightness is somewhat deceptive as the figures and landscapes can seem as fierce and tortured as his earlier works.

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