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.

Executed in 1972, Couple de figures belongs to the concluding phase of Jean Dubuffet’s L’Hourloupe cycle and anticipates the animated figures of Coucou Bazar, first realised the following year. Composed in collage and felt-tip pen on paper, the work is dated and dedicated to Jacques Robine, the architect and expert attached to the Paris Court of Appeal who later became involved in the dispute surrounding Dubuffet’s unrealised Renault commission.

Two figures emerge from an accumulation of irregular, interlocking compartments defined by emphatic black lines. Alternating passages of dense hatching and exposed paper establish a restless internal rhythm, making each body appear simultaneously solid and fragmented. The cut edges of the collaged elements reinforce this instability: the figures resemble independent components that might be rearranged, separated or set into motion.

Dubuffet developed the visual vocabulary of L’Hourloupe from automatic ballpoint-pen drawings begun in 1962. Over the following decade, its cellular forms expanded from works on paper into painting, sculpture and architecture. By 1972 he was developing the movable cut-out figures known as praticables, which would perform alongside dancers and painted scenery in the theatrical environment Coucou Bazar. The use of collage in Couple de figures similarly treats drawing as a collection of mobile parts rather than a fixed representation.

The work also possesses a notable personal history. Renault had commissioned Dubuffet to create Le Salon d’été, an extensive sculptural environment for its Boulogne-Billancourt headquarters, but terminated the project after construction had begun. Robine provided expert evidence challenging the company’s attribution of structural problems to Dubuffet’s work, and the artist subsequently presented him with this collage. Retained by the Robine family by descent, Couple de figures therefore combines an important moment in Dubuffet’s formal development with a direct record of the circumstances surrounding one of his most consequential unrealised projects. A detailed condition report is available upon request.