Printer: Mourlot (1 of 600 Editions)
Dimensions: 77 x 53 cm
Condition: Good, slight fraying at the bottom
Available: Sold
Description: This striking illustration, which Buffet used to promote his exhibition in 1960, is a great example of his figurative style characterised by dark heavy lines.
Artist: Bernard Buffet (1928-1999) was a prolific French painter, printmaker and sculptor. He grew up in a comfortable middle-class family and his mother would regularly take him to the Louvre Museum where he was inspired by the realist painters. He was a student at the Lycée Carnot during the Nazi occupation of Paris and risked travelling to classes in the evening despite the curfew imposed by the Nazi authorities. Later, he studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He was devastated when, aged seventeen, his mother died of cancer. He suffered with melancholy throughout his life.
Faithful to his figurative style, he enjoyed worldwide popularity in the 1950s. He produced religious pieces, landscapes, portraits and still-lifes which were characterised by thick black lines, elongated forms and a lack of depth of field. He produced ‘miserabilist’ pictures of despair, too, including scenes of poverty and Holocaust victims. In 1958, The New York Times called him one of the “Fabulous Five” cultural figures of post-war France along with Brigitte Bardot, Françoise Sagan, Roger Vadim and Yves Saint Laurent. But his popularity took a nosedive after he was photographed for magazine articles living a celebrity lifestyle with big houses and a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce. He was seen as out of touch with the struggling economy of post-war France. Despite painting every day for the rest of his life, those early heady days were over. While suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he committed suicide at his home in southern France, aged 71.
Since his death, his work has been fetching big prices. In 2016, Nicholas Foulkes published his biography Bernard Buffet: The Invention of the Modern Mega-Artist and, in the same year, a large retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. Buffet’s work continues to be popular and collectible.
Printer: Mourlot (1 of 600 Editions)
Dimensions: 77 x 53 cm
Condition: Good, slight fraying at the bottom
Available: Sold
Description: This striking illustration, which Buffet used to promote his exhibition in 1960, is a great example of his figurative style characterised by dark heavy lines.
Artist: Bernard Buffet (1928-1999) was a prolific French painter, printmaker and sculptor. He grew up in a comfortable middle-class family and his mother would regularly take him to the Louvre Museum where he was inspired by the realist painters. He was a student at the Lycée Carnot during the Nazi occupation of Paris and risked travelling to classes in the evening despite the curfew imposed by the Nazi authorities. Later, he studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He was devastated when, aged seventeen, his mother died of cancer. He suffered with melancholy throughout his life.
Faithful to his figurative style, he enjoyed worldwide popularity in the 1950s. He produced religious pieces, landscapes, portraits and still-lifes which were characterised by thick black lines, elongated forms and a lack of depth of field. He produced ‘miserabilist’ pictures of despair, too, including scenes of poverty and Holocaust victims. In 1958, The New York Times called him one of the “Fabulous Five” cultural figures of post-war France along with Brigitte Bardot, Françoise Sagan, Roger Vadim and Yves Saint Laurent. But his popularity took a nosedive after he was photographed for magazine articles living a celebrity lifestyle with big houses and a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce. He was seen as out of touch with the struggling economy of post-war France. Despite painting every day for the rest of his life, those early heady days were over. While suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he committed suicide at his home in southern France, aged 71.
Since his death, his work has been fetching big prices. In 2016, Nicholas Foulkes published his biography Bernard Buffet: The Invention of the Modern Mega-Artist and, in the same year, a large retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. Buffet’s work continues to be popular and collectible.
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