This collage and felt-tip pen on paper dated 1972 is dedicated to Jacques Robine, architect and expert to the court of Paris. The work has remained in the Robine family until today.

Between 1973 and 1983 a legal battle raged between Jean Dubuffet and the Renault company. The reason: a commission that Renault placed with Jean Dubuffet for Le Salon d'été, a 1,800 m2 sculpture garden to be erected at the company's headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt. But the project was abandoned only a year after Renault began work. Renault mentions additional costs, changes made by the artist, and, above all, a problem with the waterproofing of the slab on which the sculpture-garden rests, a problem that allegedly arose due to the artist's poor calculations.

This is where Jacques Robine comes in. As an architect and expert, he rules that Dubuffet's work, begun a year earlier, did not damage the slab. He invalidates Renault's arguments accusing the artist of the structural problems caused by his sculpture. To thank him, Jean Dubuffet presents him with this collage.

Couple de figures is situated at a pivotal period in Jean Dubuffet's production. The year 1972 was the peak of his Hourloupe cycle, as the gestation of the Coucou Bazar project began. Hourloupe begins in 1962 with sketches made mechanically by the artist while he is on the telephone. He draws geometric shapes with a black Bic pen, which he then hatches with blue and red pen. These drawings, resembling ectoplasm, gradually come to life and become more distinctive.

In Couple de figures, we find the accumulated black geometric shapes so typical of this production. These accumulations shape figures, soon characters. Jean Dubuffet uses collage here rather than drawing because he imagines mobile figures. The mobile figures called "practicables" (cut-out modules) will come to life in a ballet of sculptures and paintings in Coucou Bazar, created in 1973.