Beloosesky Gallery is interested in purchasing original paintings by Bernard Buffet.
Please call (917) 749-4557 or email us at info@beloosesky.com.
Bernard Buffet was born in Paris, France on July 10th, 1928. He entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1944 but worked mostly in solitude. He obtained an exhibition at the Gal. des Impressions d'Art in 1947 but attracted no attention. About that time he found his individual style and in 1948 won the Prix de la Critique jointly with Bernard Lorjou. After that he enjoyed the greatest acclaim of the younger French painters, becoming the most commercially successful French painter alive. Buffet became a well-known painter for his Expressionist works.
Buffet was a member of L’Homme Témoin (the Witness-Man), an anti-abstract art group. Buffet was supported by a French picture and art dealer while he was working on different works, portraits, still lifes, religious pieces, and landscapes.
He developed a highly mannered style immediately recognizable as his own. In sharp and spikey linear forms and with dismal greys and neutral tones he depicted emaciated figures and distorted still-lifes which seemed to express the existential and spiritual solitude of the postwar generation. Later, overwhelmed by commissions and success, his work became more stylized and decorative, losing in some measure its initial impact. He also did graphic work and book illustrations. His career culminated with a museum devoted to his work near Mishima, Japan, not in his native France.
Buffet once used his mother's torn sheets as canvases. He had the most spectacular success, claiming that "wealth aids my creative spirit; poverty does not necessarily help genius." Among his famous friends was the novelist Francoise Sagan. Unfortunately, he suffered from Parkinson's disease and had been unable to work and on October 4, 1999 at his home in Var in southern France, he committed suicide.
Sources include:
The Oxford Companion to 20th Century Art, edited by Harold Osborn
From the internet, a contribution by Christopher Masters from Microsoft Encarta 98, Deluxe British Edition
The following was written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California:
From the the Archives of AskART.
TIMELINE
1928 Born in Paris, France
1939 Entered the Lycée Carnot, Paris, France
1943 Expelled from the Lycée Carnot. Started attending an evening class in drawing.
1943 Entered at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France
1945 Left the École des Beaux-Arts and traveled to Brittany with his mother
1947 Met the writer Pierre Descargues, who wrote the catalogue preface for his first one-man show.
1948 Emmanuel David offered Buffet an exclusive contract with his gallery.
Recipient, Prix de la Critique (Critic's Prize) from the Paris art critics, Paris, France
1955 Elected the most important post-war artist by the art magazine Connaissance des Arts
1958 The New York Times magazine ranked him one of France's Fabulous Young Five
alongside such contemporaries as Yves Saint-Laurent
1971 Appointed Knight of the Honorary Legion, France
1973 Bernard-Buffet-Museum is opened in Surugadaira, Japan by the collector Kiichiro Okan
1974 Elected to the Académie des Beaux Arts, Paris, France
1999 Died in Tour, France
EXHIBITIONS
2010–2011
Bernard Buffet et la Provence, Musée Bernard Buffet, Surugadaira, Japan (solo)
2010
Bernard Buffet : Huiles et aquarelles, Galerie DIL, Paris, France (solo)
Bernard Buffet, Galerie Pascale Froessel, Strasbourg, France (solo)
2009
Bernard Buffet, Centre de la Vieille Charité, Marseille (solo)
2007
Auktion 24, Lehr, Auktionshaus und Galerie, Berlin, Germany
2006
Rétrospective, Gemeentemuseum den haag, La Haye, The Netherlands (solo)
La force de l'art - Superdefense, Galeries naitonales du Grand Palais, Paris, France
2005
Tauchfahrten, Zeichnung als Reportage, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany
1996
Musée des Beaux-arts de Kaoshiung, Taiwan (solo)
1995
The Odakyu Museum, Tokyo, Japan (solo)
1994
Documents Halle, Kassel, Germany (solo)
1993
Gustave Courbet Museum, Ornans, France (solo)
1991
Pouchkine Museum, Moscow, Russia (solo)
Ermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (solo)
Hyundai Museum, Seoul, South Korea (solo)
1987
The Odakyu Museum, Tokyo, Japan (solo)
1985
Refectoire des Jacobins, Toulouse, France (solo)
1983
Seedamm Cultural Center, Zurich, Switzerland (solo)
1978
The Postal Museum, Paris, France (solo)
1977
Gemeentmuseum, Wieger Deurne, The Netherlands (solo)
1969
Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, France (solo)
1963
The Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan (solo)
1959
The French Institute, Berlin, Germany (solo)
1958
Retrospective, Galerie Charpentier, Paris, France (solo)
1957
Galerie David and Garnier, Paris, France (solo)
1948
Salon d'Automne, Paris, France
Jeune Peinture Exhibition, Galerie Drouant-David, Paris, France
1947
Salon des Independants, Paris, France
Art Impressions book shop, Paris, France (solo)
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA
National Gallery of Victoria, Australia
Tate Gallery, London, UK