Until March 31, 2023, in the exhibition "Dubout draws the French", the museum dedicated to him, in Palavas-les-Flots, unveils unpublished drawings by the artist.
"Jean D'Ormesson said of Albert Dubout that he was the designer of paid leave, of mass society, and of consumer society", confides his grandson of the designer, Didier Dubout, pampers the work of his grandfather.
On some boards, “a month has passed, because there are 1,000 characters.
He worked like a madman, almost night and day,” he continues.
The fat lady and the little gentleman, the gendarmes and the robbers, the bowlers, the bourgeois, the civil servants... All his life, Albert Dubout drew the French.
He crunched them while driving, on vacation, in front of the television, at work, or partying.
Until March 31, 2023, in the exhibition "Dubout draws the French", the museum dedicated to him, in Palavas-les-Flots (Hérault), unveils unpublished drawings by the artist with a pipe, who worked for nearly 250 newspapers and magazines.
The burlesque style with which he caricatured people still earned him, almost fifty years after his death, to be considered one of the masters of comic drawing.
This former student of the Beaux-Arts in Montpellier also inspired Cabu, who copied his drawings as a child, and Wolinski.
And it is inseparable from the work of Marcel Pagnol and Frédéric Dard.
"Jean D'Ormesson said of Albert Dubout that he was the designer of paid holidays, of mass society, and of consumer society", confides the grandson of the designer, Didier Dubout, who pampers the work of his grandfather.
“A wild imagination”
His hobby is crowd scenes.
The queues in the administrations, the crowded beaches, the public at pétanque, the fights or the marching bands.
“He always started the drawing at the top left, and he ended at the bottom right, continues his grandson.
Never sketch, never preparatory work.
Albert Dubout had “everything in his head, he knew how to place his drawing to the nearest millimetre.
He had an overflowing imagination.
»
On some boards, “a month has passed, because there are 1,000 characters.
He worked like a madman, almost night and day.
Only in his studio, “with the most absolute calm and concentration.
No one was allowed to enter it.
My father never entered it, me even less.
Only cats had this privilege.
»
And it happened to him, often, to make committed drawings.
His hit, the fat lady and the little gentleman, was, moreover, a way of denouncing domestic violence, notes his grandson.
“As early as 1927!
“, points out Didier Dubout.
"Drawing a fat man martyring his little wife was probably too close to reality for him," he says.
His idea was to show this misfortune in reverse, with a strong woman, persecuting her little husband.
Albert Dubout was also very inspired by the Suffragettes, who campaigned for women's right to vote.
“He will be, notes his grandson, the designer of the emancipation of women.
It is high time to (re)discover Albert Dubout.
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Exposure
Occitania
Languedoc Roussillon