Dubuffet was born in Le Havre. He moved to Paris in 1918 to study painting at the Académie Julian, but after six months he left the Académie to study independently. In 1924, doubting the value of art, he stopped painting and took over his father's business selling wine. He took up painting again in the 1930s, but again stopped, only turning to art for good in 1942. His first solo show came in 1944.
Dubuffet was influenced by Hans Prinzhorn's book Artistry of the Mentally Ill (1924), and coined the term Art Brut for art produced by non-professionals working outside aesthetic norms, such as art by mental patients, prisoners, and children. Dubuffet sought to create an art as free from intellectual concerns of that as Art Brut, and his work often appears primitive and child-like.
Many of Dubuffet's works are painted in oil paint using an impasto thickened by materials such as sand, tar and straw, giving the work an unusually textured surface. From 1962 he produced a series of works in which he limited himself to the colours red, white, black, and blue. Towards the end of the 1960s he turned increasingly to sculpture, producing works in polystyrene which he then painted with vinyl paint.