Art brut is on the up. In recent years, several works associated with the movement have made their way into the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and until December, the Centre Pompidou in Paris has a special presentation of Bruno Decharme’s exceptional gift made in 2021, which greatly enriched the museum’s holdings, consisting of 921 art brut works by 242 artists. From galleries to auction houses, we have seen a similar growth in interest in this field, which was defined in 1945 by Jean Dubuffet as works ‘produced by self-taught creators, entrenched in a position of rebellious spirit or impervious to collective norms and values, who create without concern for public criticism or the gaze of others.’ This heightened awareness extends to the aisles of Art Basel Paris, where art brut, naive art, and artistic practices linked to popular culture, have a clear presence this year, reflecting the fair’s commitment to a more inclusive rereading of art history.

Galerie Dina Vierny, which will participate at this year’s fair in the new Premise sector, forewarns that its selection of artists (André Bauchant, Camille Bombois, Henri Rousseau, Louis Vivin...among others) may well surprise visitors to the international fair. The gallery’s stand was conceived as a tribute to the German art dealer and critic, Wilhelm Uhde (1874–1947), one of the first figures to champion what he called the ‘modern primitives.’ The booth will evoke his path as a collector, from his encounter with Picasso, to his discovery of Séraphine Louis (1864–1942), whose exceptional painting, Fleurs or Bouquet de fleurs or Vase jaune, will be placed at the center of the stand. This large canvas by the mystical painter dates from the late 1920s – her most celebrated period. Several of the artist’s works are in the collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou, and Louis has been the subject of renewed interest for a number of years now, following the film, Séraphine (2008), which focused on her romantic life and won 7 Césars, and the exhibition ‘De Picasso à Séraphine, Wilhelm Uhde et les Primitifs modernes’ at LaM in Villeneuve d’Ascq in 2017. A fascination for Louis’s work has spread far beyond France, as can be seen by its inclusion in exhibitions at MoMA and the Shanghai Jiushi Art Museum.

Leslie Martinez’s work will be presented by Los Angeles gallery Commonwealth and Council on a booth shared with Emalin, from London. Is this naive art? Born in the Rio Grande Valley, near the US-Mexico border, Martinez’s painting resists notions of ‘good taste’. Their work is rooted in the concept of ‘rasquachismo’ – a term used to describe the aesthetics of Mexican artistic movements which combine inventiveness with economy of means. In their paintings, the artist amalgamates scraps from their studio, while their pleated canvases utilize a palette based on the CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black) color model. Martinez’s approach combines the influence of the formal legacies of abstraction with an exploration of ancestral craft techniques, opening up a parallel with works of art brut.

Dedicated to the promotion of alternative artists, London’s The Gallery of Everything is taking part in Art Basel Paris for the first time (also in the Premise sector). It will showcase the work of Janet Sobel (1893–1968), which was noticed and promoted by Peggy Guggenheim as early as 1946, and which a gallery representative describes as ‘a precursor of all kinds of Abstract Impressionist techniques.’ They elaborates, ‘Sobel, to whom the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, devoted an exhibition this summer, is often appreciated by people who don’t look at academically trained artists. However, it cannot be categorized as art brut as defined by Dubuffet. In fact, although it’s highly unlikely she saw his work, it is remarkably similar to that of Dubuffet himself, exhibiting a formal kinship, although her inspiration is more instinctive than his.’

Also hailed by Dubuffet, as well as André Breton among others, the work of Carlo Zinelli, one of the most famous self-taught artists of the 20th century, remains unknown to the general public. The man whom connoisseurs, and some enthusiasts, simply call by his first name, produced over 2000 gouaches and drawings, most of them double-sided, during his life at the San Giacomo alla Tomba hospital in Verona, Italy, where he was treated for schizophrenia from 1947 onwards. christian berst art brut, who returns to Art Basel Paris for the third year running, will devote its stand to Zinelli’s work, presenting it more in terms of its modernity than as something ‘other,’ as the gallery's eponymous founder explains, ‘2024 marks the 50th anniversary of Zinelli’s death, and in recent years I’ve been able to acquire a number of works that are significant in terms of their historicity or provenance: it’s now or never in terms of showing them at the fair,’ Berst adds.

Zinelli may belong to the pantheon of art brut, but the prices of his works lag far behind the records set by other historic artists. One example is a 1962 painting of pink silhouettes on a red background, which passed through the collection of the late actor Robin Williams, a great fan of art brut, and sold for 28,000 euros at Sotheby’s New York in October 2018. ‘Carlo is one of the most important outsider artists of the 20th century,’ says the Parisian gallery owner. ‘Yet, even if his value has doubled in the space of seven to eight years, his prices remain very affordable compared to those achieved by the work of Martín Ramírez, Henry Darger, or Adolf Wölfli, whose finest pieces are between 150,000 and 500,000 euros.’

Andrew Edlin, the owner since 2012 of the Outsider Art Fair, which is held each year in Paris and New York, will present three artists: Forrest Bess (1911–1977), Dan Miller (b. 1961), and Melvin Way (1954–2024) – each of whom developed immediately recognizable vocabularies on the fringe. Way’s hallucinatory diagrams, drawn with ballpoint pen and marker on scraps of paper, have found their way into numerous public collections including the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC. Like him, Miller uses pen in his compositions, which also bear witness to an indecipherable desire to communicate. Both artists were featured in ‘Glossolalia: Languages of Drawing’ at MoMA in 2008. And finally, Bess who embodies the paradox of art brut. While he was included in the famous ‘Outliers and American Vanguard Art’ exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC in 2018, his work was also exhibited between 1949 and 1967, at the Betty Parsons Gallery, which championed Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Agnes Martin.