Bernard Buffet
“I want you to have a dialogue with my paintings by pure affection. Painting is not something to talk about or to analyse; it is something just to feel. A hundredth of a second is enough to judge a painting.”
Often compared to Picasso in the 1950s for his talent and fame, Buffet enjoyed astonishing early success, winning the prestigious Prix de Critique at twenty and being declared one of “France’s Fabulous Young Five" by the New York Times at thirty. As a painter, Buffet produced a relatively focused range of work, centred on religious pieces, landscapes, portraits and still-lifes. His austere, often grim treatment of his subjects, with a heavy focus on poverty and despair, led to his work being interpreted as "Miserabilist", but he also portrayed subjects as varied as cars, clowns, and table lamps. His work was characterized by thick black lines, elongated forms, aggressive draughtsmanship and a lack of depth of field.
Buffet was an extraordinarily prolific painter; by the age of twenty-six, it was said that he had already completed more paintings than Renoir had produced in his entire lifetime. His meteoric rise to success had attracted the disdain of Picasso, who contributed to a public backlash against his work, along with André Malraux, the powerful French Minister of Culture. By the end of the decade, public and critical taste had turned against him.
In the 21st century, Buffet has enjoyed a huge resurgence of interest. In 2015, he achieved a new auction record of £1,022,500 when his 1991 painting Les Clowns Musiciens, le Saxophoniste sold at Christie's in London. He was also the subject of a major retrospective at Paris's Musée d’Art Moderne in 2016.
