DEBORA ZAFFARANO | ROME, 22 MAY 2025
What is Art Brut? And what links this artistic expression to the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, an iconic artist of 1980s New York?
At first glance, they seem like distant worlds: on one hand, an artistic language born on the margins of society and the art system; on the other, an internationally celebrated artist, fully integrated into the dynamics of the market and galleries. Yet, between these two realities there are points of contact rooted in a shared desire to go beyond the boundaries of official art and give voice to something purer, more authentic, and uncontaminated.
The term Art Brut literally translates to “raw art.” It was coined in 1945 by French intellectual and artist Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) to define an unconventional form of artistic production, free from cultural and academic influences, driven by an urgent inner need. The works of these authors are born in the intimacy and secrecy of their creator, as a result of marginality and isolation. Their gestures lack stylistic research or refined techniques—what emerges instead is a deep need to exist and express oneself.
According to Dubuffet, the most authentic art is not born in museums, but in unexpected places, such as psychiatric hospitals, prisons, among self-taught individuals, and those experiencing social or psychological exclusion.
(© Portrait of Jean Dubuffet: John Craven. Courtesy of the Fondation Dubuffet Archives)
In his attempt to recover a primitive form of art, Dubuffet also turned his attention to urban environments, particularly to graffiti on city walls. Those raw, often anonymous and provocative signs appeared to him as a form of instant narrative, akin to that of children or outsiders. This vision was confirmed when he discovered Brassaï’s (1899–1984) photographs, collected in the volume Graffiti (1961), the result of over twenty years of documentation of stylized faces, animals, and abstract symbols carved or drawn on the walls of Paris—some of which appeared in Dubuffet’s own Cahiers de l’Art Brut.
Alongside these urban graffiti forms, an exemplary case is the work created in confinement by Fernando Oreste Nannetti (1927–1994), aka NOF4, who, with the metal buckle of his uniform vest, carved into the wall of the former Volterra asylum an extraordinary testimony of automatic and visionary writing—today considered one of the leading figures of Art Brut in Italy.
(Brassaï, from the series “Graffiti” 1935–1950)
A few decades later, in New York, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) began his artistic journey precisely with graffiti. In the late 1970s, he emerged on the scene by covering downtown Manhattan walls with enigmatic urban verses in acrylic paint, signed SAMO©, in collaboration with his friend Al Diaz. He quickly moved from sidewalks to galleries, becoming one of the most acclaimed artists of his generation. His explosive compositions—populated by archaic symbols, fragmented words, skulls, dismembered bodies, and childlike signs—form visual maps of conflict, both personal and collective, rich with references to urban imagery, African American culture, and jazz music, openly denouncing racism, inequality, and consumer society.
It is precisely in this existential and obsessive need to “shout the world,” in a unique and unstoppable gesture, that Basquiat’s art recalls the same expressive power Dubuffet saw in the creations of marginal artists.
Despite many points of contact, however, there are significant differences between Art Brut and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work. One of the main distinctions is artistic awareness: Art Brut creators, by definition, do not recognize themselves as artists and are often unaware of the value of their work. Basquiat, on the other hand, was fully conscious of his role and intentionally operated within the art system. His work, while retaining an instinctive and raw expressive character, is the result of deliberate choices and inevitably influenced by the culture of his time, contemporary society, and continuous references to art history—with which it constantly engages.
(Nannetti’s inscriptions on the walls of the Psychiatric Hospital of Volterra. Pier Nello Manoni, Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne)
Nevertheless, like the brut artists, Basquiat too was driven by an inner urgency, a deep call to narrate himself and his identity. In both cases, their gesture takes the form of a cry, a denunciation, an act of resistance. Art Brut and Basquiat’s work demonstrate that art does not need to conform to the standards imposed by culture or society to be authentic; often, it is precisely on the margins, in disorder, and in the cracks of human experience that it finds its truest strength.
At auction: Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988), Untitled (1981), marker on paper (20.5 × 13 cm)