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Derived from the French word for formless, the term Art Informel gained currency during the early 1950s to describe the new expressive gestural styles adopted by artists like Jean Dubuffet, Karel Appel, Emilio Vedova, and others. Between April 1950 and February 1951, Dubuffet created over thirty-five paintings on the subject of Corps de dames, or “Ladies’ Bodies.” When a group of these works were exhibited at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, in January 1951, a critic described the crude, primitive, graffiti-like representations of the female form as having been “flattened out by a steamroller and allowed to dry in the sun for quite some time.”

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