Bernard Buffet (; 10 July 1928 – 4 October 1999) was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor.
He produced a varied and extensive body of work. His style was exclusively figurative. The artist enjoyed worldwide popularity early in his career but was shunned by art pundits later on.
Today, there is a renewed interest in Bernard Buffet's oeuvre. His works can be seen in the collections of the world's leading museums, including the
Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris
Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris (, Paris' Museum of Modern Art) or MAM Paris, is a major municipal museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art of the 20th and 21st centuries, including monumental murals by Raoul Dufy, Gaston Suisse, and Henri ...
, the
Tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
, and the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
.
Biography
Bernard Buffet was born in 1928. He hailed from a middle-class family with roots in Northern and Western France. His spent his childhood in Paris. His mother often took him to the
Louvre Museum
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
, where he got familiar with the works of
Realist painters, such as
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and ...
. This is likely to have influenced his style. In 1955, he painted a work that paid tribute to Courbet's ''
Le Sommeil
''Le Sommeil'' (translated in English variously as ''The Sleepers'' and ''Sleep'') is an eroticDorothy M. KosinskiGustave Courbet's ''The Sleepers.'' The Lesbian Image in Nineteenth Century French Art and Literature Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 9, N ...
.''
Bernard Buffet was a student at the
Lycée Carnot
The Lycée Carnot is a public secondary and higher education school at 145 Boulevard Malesherbes in the 17th arrondissement, Paris, France. The Lycée Carnot was founded in 1869, first bearing the name of École Monge and then renamed in 1895. Som ...
during the Nazi occupation of Paris. He travelled to drawings courses in the evenings despite the curfew imposed by the Nazi authorities. He then studied art at the
École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts
The Beaux-Arts de Paris is a French ''grande école'' whose primary mission is to provide high-level arts education and training. This is classical and historical School of Fine Arts in France. The art school, which is part of the Paris Scienc ...
(National School of the Fine Arts) and worked in the studio of the painter
Eugène Narbonne. Among his classmates were
Maurice Boitel
Maurice Boitel (July 31, 1919 – August 11, 2007) was a French painter.
Artistic life
Boitel belonged to the art movement called "La Jeune Peinture" ("Young Picture") of the School of Paris,The School of Paris (1945–1965) by Lydia Harambourg. ...
and
Louis Vuillermoz. He met the French painter
Marie-Thérèse Auffray and was influenced by her work.
Buffet's mother, Blanche, died from breast cancer in 1945. Seventeen-year-old Buffet was devastated. Losing his mother at an early age remained a source of melancholy throughout his life.
Sustained by the picture-dealer
Maurice Garnier Maurice may refer to:
People
*Saint Maurice (died 287), Roman legionary and Christian martyr
*Maurice (emperor) or Flavius Mauricius Tiberius Augustus (539–602), Byzantine emperor
*Maurice (bishop of London) (died 1107), Lord Chancellor and Lo ...
, Buffet produced religious pieces, landscapes, portraits and
still-lifes. In 1946, he had his first painting shown, a self-portrait, at the Salon des Moins de Trente Ans at the Galerie Beaux-Arts. He had at least one major exhibition every year. Buffet illustrated "Les Chants de Maldoror" written by
Comte de Lautréamont
Comte de Lautréamont () was the ''nom de plume'' of Isidore Lucien Ducasse (4 April 1846 – 24 November 1870), a French poet born in Uruguay. His only works, ''Les Chants de Maldoror'' and ''Poésies'', had a major influence on modern arts ...
in 1952. In 1955, he was awarded the first prize by the magazine Connaissance des Arts, which named the ten best post-war artists. In 1958, at the age of 30, the first retrospective of his work was held at the Galerie Charpentier.
Pierre Bergé
Pierre Vital Georges Bergé (; 14 November 1930 – 8 September 2017) was a French industrialist and patron. He co-founded the fashion label Yves Saint Laurent, and was a longtime business partner (and onetime life partner) of its namesake des ...
was Buffet's live-in lover until Bergé left Buffet for
Yves Saint Laurent.
[John Lichfield]
"Bernard Buffet: Return of the 'Poser'"
''The Independent'', 16 March 2009. Retrieved on 26 July 2014.
On 12 December 1958, Buffet married the writer and actress Annabel Schwob. They adopted three children. Daughter Virginie was born in 1962; daughter Danielle, in 1963; and son Nicolas, in 1973. Bernard Buffet was named "Chevalier de la
Légion d'Honneur
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...
" in 1973.
On 23 November 1973, the Bernard Buffet Museum was founded by Kiichiro Okano, in Surugadaira, Japan.
At the request of the French postal administration in 1978, he designed a stamp depicting the Institut et le Pont des Arts – on this occasion the Post Museum arranged a retrospective of his works.
[''Bernard Buffet Maler Painter Peintre'' (brochure), ]Museum für Moderne Kunst
The Museum für Moderne Kunst (''Museum of Modern Art''), or short MMK, in Frankfurt, was founded in 1981 and opened to the public 6 June 1991. The museum was designed by the Viennese architect Hans Hollein. Because of its triangular shape, it ...
, Frankfurt
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...
, April 2008.
Buffet created more than 8,000 paintings and many
prints as well.
Buffet died by
suicide at his home in
Tourtour, southern France, on 4 October 1999.
He was suffering from
Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...
and was no longer able to work. Police said that Buffet died around 4 p.m after putting his head in a plastic bag attached around his neck with tape.
The popularity of Buffet's work, as well as the level of media attention around his lifestyle, were quite high in the 1950s and 1960s. Although he kept on painting throughout his life, there was a certain decline in interest in his work in the last decades of the 20th century, especially in France. This decline in popularity was partly influenced by his fall from grace with French art pundits, whose support and interest shifted away from figurative art.
In the 21st century, there has been a renewed spike in interest in the work of Buffet. With some successful exhibitions in France and throughout the world. In 2016, British author
Nicholas Foulkes publishe
''Bernard Buffet: The Invention of the Modern Mega-Artist'' in which he offers a controversial biographical account of Buffet's life and work.
Theme exhibitions (selection)
* 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
The Salon d'Automne (; en, Autumn Salon), or Société du Salon d'automne, is an art exhibition held annually in Paris, France. Since 2011, it is held on the Champs-Élysées, between the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais, in mid-October. The f ...
* 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
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...
* 1974 Member of the
Académie des Beaux-Arts
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...
Collections (selection)
* 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
Cultural references
Film
* ''Bernard Buffet'', a 1956 film by
Étienne Périer
References
External links
Musée Bernard BuffetArtnet.com Report from Paris by Adrian Darmon 10-25-99: Buffet obituaryPortrait of Bernard Buffetby
Reginald Gray (2009, after a drawing from life made by Gray in 1963)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Buffet, Bernard
20th-century French painters
20th-century French male artists
French male painters
Artists who committed suicide
People with Parkinson's disease
1928 births
1999 deaths
École des Beaux-Arts alumni
Members of the Académie des beaux-arts
Painters who committed suicide
Recipients of the Legion of Honour
Bisexual artists
Bisexual men
1999 suicides
20th-century LGBT people