The Busy Life

1953
oil on canvas

Style/Movement: Surrealist, 20th Century

Presented by the artist 1966

T00867

This work belongs to a series that Dubuffet called ‘beaten pastes’ because the main paint layer resembled butter, into which he scratched the graffiti-like figures. He wrote ‘I am at a loss to explain just what it was in these paintings that gave me - that still gives me - such a keen satisfaction. It probably has something to do with the physical pleasure derived from spreading freely, with a large spatula as broad as one’s hand, this beautiful white paste... then letting the long knife wander over the smooth paste, tracing with such perfect ease graffiti of sonorous colors.’
(From the display caption November 2005)