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(1928-1999)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Bernard Buffet was born in Paris in 1928. He showed an aptitude for drawing from an early age. He left the Lyc\u00e9e Carnot in 1943 and entered Eug\u00e8ne Narbonne’s studio at the \u00c9cole Nationale Sup\u00e9rieure des Beaux-Arts the following year. The death of his mother in 1945 affected him deeply. <\/p>\n The artistic landscape in which Buffet art emerged in the years following the Liberation saw the consecration of the great historical figures of modernism, such as Matisse, Picasso, L\u00e9ger and Chagall. They were showcased at art fairs and exhibitions. The 1944 Salon d’Automne, known as the “Salon de la Lib\u00e9ration”, presented a major retrospective of Picasso’s work, while the following year’s Salon d’Automne celebrated the work of Matisse. Jean Cassou, the first director of the Mus\u00e9e National d’Art Moderne, organized exhibitions of their recent work during the first years of the institution’s opening, inaugurated in June 1947. <\/p>\n In addition to the omnipresence of these great pioneers, the art scene of the time was dominated by abstraction, particularly that of art informel, to use the term coined by Michel Tapi\u00e9. In this context, Buffet, along with Paul Rebeyrolle, Andr\u00e9 Cottavoz and Andr\u00e9 Minaux, was one of the representatives of a humanist “new realism” that placed man at the center of his art, championed by Claude Roger-Marx, Pierre Descargues and Jean Bouret, famous for his stance against abstract art. In the quarrel between abstract and figurative art, these painters joined forces and exhibited at the Salon des Moins de Trente ans.[1]<\/span><\/a>the Manifeste de l’Homme T\u00e9moin<\/em>[2]<\/span><\/a>the Salon de la Jeune Peinture[3]<\/span><\/a>while other events were organized to promote and defend abstraction, such as the Salon des R\u00e9alit\u00e9s nouvelles created in 1946. <\/p>\n Quickly noticed, rewarded and supported by critics, government officials and important, influential collectors, Buffet’s art was a runaway success. The speed of the twentieth<\/sup> century is accelerating even faster in the twenty-first. <\/p>\n In 1946, he exhibited a self-portrait<\/em> at the Salon des Moins de Trente ans<\/em>, Galerie des Beaux-Arts. The following year, at the Salon des Ind\u00e9pendants, his work was noticed by Pierre Descargues, a critic with the journal Arts<\/em>, who offered him his first solo exhibition in December 1947, at the bookshop Les Impressions d’Art, rue des Ecoles. Raymond Cogniat, then Inspector General of Fine Arts, arranged for the State to buy In the spring of 1948, the artist presented Deux hommes dans une chambre<\/em>, painted the previous year (Collection Fonds de dotation Bernard Buffet, Paris) at the Prix de la Jeune Peinture, created in 1946 by Galerie Drouant-David. On this occasion, he attracted the interest of collectors Maurice Girardin and Roger Dutilleul, whose support was crucial. Emmanuel David offered him an exclusive contract with Galerie Drouant-David. In the autumn, the contract was shared with Maurice Garnier of Galerie Visconti, 35 rue de Seine. In the same year, Buffet won the prestigious Prix de la Critique, sharing the prize with Bernard Lorjou, twenty years his senior and involved in the same movement. <\/p>\n His career was launched.<\/p>\n Buffet quickly forged a highly personal, eminently graphic style with angular lines that were immediately recognizable. He established a typology of simple, highly stylized forms, framed in black and devoid of modelling, in a space without depth. In the early years of his career, just after the war, his style was particularly austere, with little use of color. The sobriety of his early work earned him the label of “miserabilist” painter. Over time, his aesthetic varies little, were it not for the color. Depending on the period, the black lines are more or less pronounced and their thickness fluctuates. His models were Jacques-Louis David, his pupil Antoine-Jean Gros, whose work he admired in particular <\/p>\n His first exhibition at Galerie Drouant-David takes place in February 1949. At the end of the year (October 29-November 15), he takes part in the second Manifeste de l’Homme T\u00e9moin<\/em> in the Claude gallery. Other new participants included painters Andr\u00e9 Minaux, Robert Charazac and Jean Couty. In the same year, his career took on an international dimension. Galleries in New York, Basel, Brussels and Copenhagen show his work. Pierre Descargues publishes Bernard Buffet<\/em> with Presses Litt\u00e9raires de France (in 1951, he devotes a book to Paul Rebeyrolle, and again to Buffet in 1959). <\/p>\n In 1950, the artist met Pierre Berg\u00e9, who worked at Richard Anacr\u00e9on’s Originale gallery, specialized in first editions, located on rue de Seine opposite the Visconti gallery. Two years her junior, Pierre Berg\u00e9 was already close to a literary milieu. The couple spent the summer of 1951 in Manosque, Haute-Provence, staying with Jean Giono. They settled in an old sheepfold in Nanse, near Reillanne. Buffet takes part in the first Salon des Peintres t\u00e9moins de leur temps, created by Isis Kischka, on the theme of Work<\/em>, with La Poissonnerie<\/em> (Collection Fonds de Dotation Bernard Buffet, Paris), a highly structured painting whose composition is built around a play of formal rhymes between the shape of the fish and that of the grid motifs. Following in the footsteps of other artists, notably Matisse in 1953 on the theme of Dimanche<\/em>, Buffet repeatedly composed the cover of the event’s catalog, the only salon to which he remained faithful until its last edition in 1968. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n From 1951 onwards, Armand Drouant and Emmanuel David’s gallery presented large formats and oil paintings; Maurice Garnier’s gallery presented small formats and works on paper.[4]<\/span><\/a>. In February 1952, the exhibition of La Passion du Christ (The Passion of the Christ<\/em> ) – a subject in the tradition of history painting, and at odds with contemporary painting at the time – inaugurated the principle of an annual exhibition in February on a theme chosen by the artist on which he had worked the previous year. The collector Maurice Girardin commissions one hundred and twenty-five drypoints to illustrate Les Chants de Maldoror<\/em> by Isidore Ducasse, Comte de Lautr\u00e9amont, an essential figure in the Surrealist Pantheon. Buffet paints still lifes composed of bouquets of flowers, a favorite subject in the artist’s iconography, and a series of Landscapes<\/em> presented in February 1953. The following year’s exhibition focused on Interiors<\/em>. The pallid figures are depicted in front of walls covered with brightly colored wallpaper, punctuated with decorative motifs. Andr\u00e9 Warnod wrote: “These paintings give off an impression of unhealthy, disquieting power.[5]<\/span><\/a> “. The artist buys the Manines property in Domont, near Paris. <\/p>\n In 1954, Buffet returned to large-scale painting with Horreur de la guerre<\/em>, exhibited the following year at Galerie Drouant-David. My subject,” he confided in the journal Arts<\/em>, “has no geographical or historical limits. It encompasses all wars, of all times, of all countries. They are linked by a single feeling: the horror I feel for them. <\/p>\n In 1958, when Buffet was only thirty years old, Galerie Charpentier (Raymond Nacenta) organized a major retrospective of his work, Cent tableau 1944-1958<\/em>, which met with exceptional success, with over eight thousand visitors flocking to the opening on January 16. On this occasion, he met Pierre Sorlier and Georges Sagourin from Fernand Mourlot’s studio, who became his assistants for his lithographic work. <\/p>\n On January 20, Fran\u00e7oise Sagan’s ballet Le Rendez-vous manqu\u00e9<\/em> premiered at the Petit Op\u00e9ra de Monte-Carlo, directed by Roger Vadim, with music by Michel Magne and sets and costumes by Bernard Buffet, with only Buffet’s contribution spared by the critics. Like Buffet, Sagan enjoyed a rapid rise to fame at an early age with his first novel, Bonjour tristesse<\/em>, published by Julliard in 1954. In January 1958, he and Pierre Berg\u00e9 attended Yves Saint-Laurent’s first fashion show at Dior. <\/p>\n His annual exhibition at Galerie David et Garnier focuses on the theme of “Joan of Arc”. Color is vibrant, freed from its straitjacket of austerity. This series, executed in 1957, marks a turning point in Buffet’s work. A moment of pictorial crisis. The artist had reached an impasse; inspiration had left him, or at least had changed register. The historical context was no longer the same, and the tragedy and suffering of war and the immediate post-war period were less present, less vivid. With the introduction of vivid color, Buffet’s painting changed in tone, and a segment of public opinion turned away from it. <\/p>\n Buffet and Pierre Berg\u00e9 separate that same year. During the summer, the artist met Annabel Schwob de Lure, a friend of Fran\u00e7oise Sagan and Juliette Gr\u00e9co and a Saint-Germain-des-Pr\u00e9s muse. They married in December 1958. Annabel became his muse. In his early representations, his face eschews the sharp, angular lines characteristic of Buffet’s style. He maintains soft lines and curves until the following year’s Annabel in a Bathing Suit, when Buffet’s sharp line takes over his face. In February, he exhibited in The following year, he painted Monumental Birds<\/em>. Presented in February 1960 at the David et Garnier gallery, they caused a scandal. His “large yellow, red, green and blue birds watch for strange naked women[8]<\/span><\/a> “in equivocal postures. The bright color is surprisingly present, and its material is thicker, which is new. While Buffet remained faithful to his strong, angular black line, from the Birds<\/em> series onwards he developed a more painterly language of color and material, analogous to the practice of certain abstract artists such as Jean Fautrier. He renews his collaboration with Roland Petit’s Ballets company, designing the sets and costumes for Patron<\/em> by Marcel Aym\u00e9, with music by Guy B\u00e9art. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Sixties were the cradle of Conceptual Art and Minimalism, counterpoises to Abstract Expressionism and Informal Art. Young artists were also marked by a return to the real, to the object, driven by Pop Art in the United States and Nouveau R\u00e9alisme in France, against a backdrop of economic development and a society in the throes of change, particularly in terms of consumerism. Buffet remained faithful to his aesthetic and to the typology of his subjects, which were presented in cycles. <\/p>\n In 1961, he returned to narrative history painting with a series on the life of Christ, intended for the chapel of his Ch\u00e2teau l’Arc estate, acquired in 1956. The series was exhibited the following February at the David et Garnier gallery. While the drawing is hard and harsh, and particularly strong, the colors, dominated by warm tones of red, yellow and orange, create a golden light. The paintings are part of the Vatican Museum collections. The following year, he designed the sets and costumes for Georges Bizet’s <\/p>\n By 1966, Buffet had fallen to eighteenth place in the list of the most important artists of the time, once again published by the magazine Connaissance des Arts<\/em>. His reputation had been declining since the end of the fifties, when the Charpentier gallery retrospective was the high point of his career. He was roundly criticized. He was criticized for not renewing his style, for taking advantage of a system, for being a commercial painter. “People hate me. For fifteen years, they’ve been saying that I’m finished.[9]<\/span><\/a> “. <\/p>\n In 1965, the artist’s exhibition at the Galerie David et Garnier, prompted Raymond Cogniat to make a rather gloomy observation. Bernard Buffet once again invites us, very punctually, to this annual meeting which,” he writes, “appears more and more to be an individual act with no connection to the other manifestations of artistic life.[10]<\/span><\/a> “. <\/p>\n Until the end of his career, light subjects such as bouquets of flowers, clowns, landscapes, cities (Paris, New York, St. Tropez, Venice, St. Petersburg), or more occasionally churches, castles, boats, etc., alternated with large-scale narrative frescoes in the tradition of Buffet’s beloved great painting, These alternate with grand narrative frescoes in the tradition of Buffet’s beloved large-scale painting, from Dante’s Inferno<\/em> (1976) to The French Revolution<\/em> (1977), Cervantes’ Don Quixote<\/em> (1988), Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea<\/em> (1989), Homer’s Odyssey<\/em> (1993).<\/p>\n In 1981, he travelled to Japan to visit the Bernard Buffet Museum, created in Surugadaira by a passionate collector, Kiichiro Okano, and inaugurated on November 25, 1973. He produced some twenty paintings, presented the following year at the Maurice Garnier gallery. Buffet fell in love with the country. He loved its modern civilization and the great refinement of its traditions. It was one of his sources of inspiration: Oiseaux d’Hokka\u00efdo<\/em> (1981), Sumo<\/em>, Kabuki<\/em> (1987). He returned twice to the Land of the Rising Sun, in 1988 to inaugurate the extension to the museum dedicated to him, and again in 1996 to open the annex housing his etchings and lithographs. The following year, Buffet felt the first signs of Parkinson’s disease. Unable to paint any longer, he ended his life on October 14, 1999 at his property in La Baume, near Tourtour in the Haut-Var region of France. His last series, on the theme of Death<\/em>, was exhibited in Maurice Garnier’s gallery in February of the following year, as is customary. The works of recent years feature a much freer brushwork, detached from detail in a stylized style, as in Squelettes travestis<\/em>, 1998 (Collection Fonds de Dotation Bernard Buffet, Paris), or certain paintings of La Mort<\/em>, which are surprisingly close to the aesthetic of Jean-Michel Basquiat. <\/p>\n Buffet received several prestigious distinctions during his lifetime: he was made an Officer of the L\u00e9gion d’Honneur (1993), and a member of the Acad\u00e9mie des Beaux-Arts, painting section (1974).<\/p>\n In 2009, Maurice Garnier and his wife Ida created the Fonds de Dotation Bernard Buffet, with a view to eventually creating a museum dedicated to his work. Three years later, the couple made a donation to the Mus\u00e9e d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, which organized a retrospective of Buffet’s work in 2016. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bernard Buffet was a prolific printmaker. He created a total of over 550 lithographs and almost 300 etchings up to 1967 – the date on which the catalog raisonn\u00e9 of his engraved work came to an end. <\/p>\n His first lithograph, Les Chardons<\/em> (in black), dates from 1952. Until 1958, he produced some fifteen plates. His production then intensified. He frequented Fernand Mourlot’s studio, where he worked with Charles Sorlier, who was also Marc Chagall’s accomplice, and pressman Georges Sagourin. Buffet’s habit was to conceive several plates simultaneously on the same theme; he then brought them together in albums, such as New York<\/em> (1964); Paris<\/em> (1966); The French Revolution<\/em> (1977); and so on. His style is highly personal and immediately recognizable. His language of hatching, combined with vivid colors, is specific to his lithographic work. It is what makes his work so unique. He has also been very active in illustrating texts by a wide range of authors, from Isidore Ducasse (comte de Lautr\u00e9amont), Les Chants de Maldoror<\/em> (1952), to Fran\u00e7oise Sagan, Toxique<\/em> (1964), via Dante Alighieri, L’Enfer<\/em> (1977), and Charles Baudelaire, Saint-Cast souvenirs d’Enfance<\/em> (1962), not forgetting those by his wife Annabel relating to their travels and holidays, Saint-Tropez<\/em> (1979), Venice <\/em>(1986), or Voyage au Japon<\/em> (1981). Still-lifes of flowers are also among the subjects most frequently represented in his independent printmaking, especially in lithographs. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/span><\/a> The Salon des Moins de Trente ans was reintroduced in 1941 as a reaction against abstract art.<\/p>\n [2]<\/span><\/a> The first Manifeste de l’Homme T\u00e9moin<\/em>, initiated by painter Bernard Lorjou and Jean Bouret, presented works by Bernard Lorjou, his wife Yvonne Mottet, and Ruche painters Paul Rebeyrolle, Michel Thompson and Michel de Gallard at the Galerie du Bac from June 21 to July 21, 1948.<\/p>\n [3]<\/span><\/a> The Salon de la Jeune Peinture was founded in 1949 by Denys Chevalier and Pierre Descargues, who had initiated the Salon de la Jeune Sculpture a year earlier.<\/p>\n [4]<\/span><\/a> In 1956 Emmanuel David and Maurice Garnier formed a partnership (Galerie David et Garnier, avenue Matignon). In 1968 Emmanuel David set up his own gallery; Galerie David et Garnier became Galerie Maurice Garnier. <\/p>\n [5]<\/span><\/a> Andr\u00e9 Warnod, Le Figaro<\/em>, February 8 1954.<\/p>\n [6]<\/span><\/a> Bernard Buffet, Arts<\/em>, February 2, 1955.<\/p>\n [7]<\/span><\/a> Connaissance des Arts<\/em>, February 15 1955, no. 36. Other artists included Antoni Clav\u00e9, Bernard Lorjou, Alfred Manessier, Nicolas de Sta\u00ebl, Edouard Pignon, Jean Carzou, Andr\u00e9 Minaux, Andr\u00e9 Marchand and Jean Bazaine. <\/p>\n [8]<\/span><\/a> Elle<\/em>, February 19, 1960.<\/p>\n [9]<\/span><\/a> Mich\u00e8le Manceaux, “Bernard Buffet”, L’Express<\/em>, February 13, 1964.<\/p>\nBernard Buffet engraver<\/h2>\n