Bernard Buffet French, 1928-1999
Born in Paris on 10 July 1928, Bernard Buffet was a painter, lithographer, and etcher who studied at the Paris École des Beaux-Arts and gained early critical acclaim and fortune through his prolific output – he painted more than 8,000 works in his lifetime – and immediately recognizable stylistic manner.
Active during a time when abstraction was the predominant artistic style, Buffet defended representational art and was an active member of the anti-abstraction group L’homme Témoin (The Witness-Man).
Featuring portraiture, townscapes, still lifes, and historical and religious subjects, Buffet’s oeuvre is primarily graphic, with spiky, angular and elongated forms rendered in a somber color palette. This stylistic mode gives his work an austere and melancholic tone that has been interpreted as a representation of the emotional state of the post-war generation. Buffet has had dozens of international exhibitions and was awarded a number of prestigious honors, including being made an Officer of the Légion d’Honneur in 1973 and being inducted into the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1974. Unfortunately, the end of his life was marked by a prolonged battle with Parkinson’s disease, which resulted in the artist committing suicide at the age of 71 on 4 October 1999.
The work of Buffet has remained consistently popular, and his paintings have come to be housed in some of the most notable museums around the world, including the Tate Modern, London, MOMA, New York, and a dedicated collection at the Bernard Buffet Museum in Japan. No doubt a result of his iconic style and continuous desirability, according to Sotheby’s Mei Moses the average compound annual return for Bernard Buffet is 9.9%, with 85.2% of works increasing in value.
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The top three auction prices for Buffet are:
· £1 million ($1.5 million) for Les Clown Musiciens, Le Saxophoniste. 1991. Christie's London. 22 June 2016.
· $996,300 for La Tour Eiffel. 1955. Matsart Auctioneers and Appraisers. 16 February 2016.
· $797,500 for Scene De Rue. 1956. Sotheby's New York. 26 February 1990.
"Painting, we do not talk about it, we do not analyse it, we feel it." Bernard Buffet
Theme exhibitions
- 1952 La Passion du Christ
- 1954 Horreur de la Guerre
- 1958 Jeanne d'Arc
- 1961 Portraits d'Annabel
- 1962 La Chapelle de Château l'Arc
- 1965 Les ecorches
- 1967 La corrida
- 1971 Les Folles
- 1977 L'enfer de Dante
- 1978 The French Revolution
- 1989 Vingt mille lieues sous les mers
- 1991 Souvenirs d'Italie
- 1991 New York
- 1992 Les Clowns Musiciens
- 1992 Saint-Petersburg
- 1993 L'Empire ou les plaisirs de la guerre
- 1993 Promenade Provencale
- 1995 Sept peches capitaux
- 1996 Pekin
- 1998 La maison
- 1999 Mes Singes
- 2000 La mort
Awards
- 1947 Member of the Salon d'Automne
- 1947 Member of the Société des Artistes Indépendants
- 1948 co-recipient of the Prix de la Critique with Bernard Lorjou
- 1950 Prix Puvis de Chavannes
- 1955 First Prize by Magazine Connaissance
- 1973 Officer of the Légion d'Honneur
- 1974 Member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts
Collections
- ARTAX, Düsseldorf
- Boca Raton Museum of Art
- Ca la Ghironda, Bologna
- Kunstmuseum Walter, Augsburg
- Musée d´art moderne de Lille, Villeneuve d´Ascq
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje
- National Gallery for Foreign Art, Sofia
- National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
- National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
- Tampere Art Museum
- Tate Gallery, London
- Wellside Gallery, Seoul
- Alexandre de Bothuri collection, Palm Beach, USA " Le Clown Jaune" 1955