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BUFFET Bernard
Bernard BUFFET (- 1999)
An article in the French magazine Connaissance des Arts, published in February 1955 entitled: “The ten most talented artists from today’s young school of contemporary art” listed Bernard Buffet in first place. One hundred of the world’s most renowned specialists of the time had been surveyed…almost all of them placed Bernard Buffet at the top of the list.
In France’s early sixties, the two artistic phenomena were undoubtedly Picasso and Buffet. The legendary Andy Warhol was quoted in 1985 as saying “the French indeed have a great painter…my favorite artist and the last great painter from Paris: Buffet”.
His pride and soul wounded to the bone by the 20th century way of life, where mankind showed proof of incredible brutality, Bernard Buffet sought solace in his art, repeatedly depicting the telltale signs of human failure.
Bernard Buffet worked non-stop and what always stands out in his paintings is the incredible balance he was able to strike, whether his work dealt with still life, the ocean, New York, Paris, insects, Annabel, bull fighting, landscapes, clowns or self-portraits. His paintings all follow a specific method, are rigorous while revealing a bit of “freshness”. Bernard Buffet’s images escape time and its limitations. Each year, the artist took on a new theme using the same procedure of “schematization”: the systematic lengthening of the face, a palette of rather cold colors, shapes having the same “dark” aura to them.
Bernard Buffet’s works are timeless, an ever-present quality running through the ensemble of the artist’s work. Buffet took his own life on October 4, 1999 in the Var region of France.
His works are extremely popular in Japan where an art collector, Mr. Okano, built a museum in his memory at the foot of Fuji Yama.
Bernard Buffet remains, without a doubt, one of the highest valued painters of the 20th century.
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