L’atelier 1947,  Bernard Buffet Museum, Surugadaira, Japan

For most of his life in France, Bernard Buffet was an artist so popular and financially successful that art critics never respected him. He had a museum in Surugadaira in Japan as early as 1973, was collected and exhibited all around the world, but not in France! He has to be the most immediately recognizable artist, for his linear paintings are visible from afar and his style of portraits is as unique as Giacometti’s. And he is at last celebrated at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Bernard Buffet at 20 when he wins the Prix de la Critique for this painting “Two men in a room”

At 18, he paints a group of fish that is now part of Pierre Bergé’s collection, at 19 he paints naked men, at 20 he wins the Prix de la Critique which makes him famous. Very soon, he joins Françoise Sagan and Roger Vadim in the creative movement of the time : they produce a ballet of which he designs the sets, in 1958 in Monte Carlo.

“Homme à l’oeuf sur le plat, 1947

The early years of this profusive painter, are major and a whole room of beige and grey male nudes at the beginning of the show is stunning. « L’homme à l’œuf au plat » in 1947, « Le Buveur » in 1948, which reminds us of Picasso’s buveur d’absinthe, « Trois nus à la toilette », are all beautiful.
This young boy who starts painting at 10 on curtains, cloths, leftovers of wood panels, is kicked out of Lycée Carnot and enters Ecole des Beaux Arts. He is incredibly beautiful at 20. He meets Pierre Bergé very early on, and there are a number of portraits lent by him in the show. He moves to Nanse, a farmhouse near Manosque in Provence where writer Jean Giono lives and they befriend each other in 1951-55. He hangs the canvas on the wall and paints it like that. After sharing Piere Bergé’s life from 1950 to 1958, he marries Annabel Schwob of whom there is a 1960 portrait.

“Homme assis dans l’atelier”, 1949, Surugadaira, Bernard Buffet Museum,

Later his series of monkeys, sad clowns and circus, fish and animals of all sorts, his 1954 trilogy of the Horror of War (the hanged, the shot, the angel of war) are less pleasing to the eye but incredibly daring and huge in size. His last 24 paintings of « Death » found in his studio in Tourtour, are exhibited after he dies at Maurice Garnier’s gallery.

Le Buveur, 1948 is reminiscent of Picasso

He sadly commits suicide in 1999. He has been exhibited in Kassel at the Documenta, at Museum Pouchkine in Moscow and the Hermitage in St Petersburg, at the Venice Biennale in 1956, and makes the cover of Der Spiegel in July 1956 with this title : « Der Mann mit dem goldenem Arm » (the man with the golden arm) in reference to the wealth he has accumulated through his talent.

There is one 1949 portrait of Maurice Garnier (whom I visited in Venice in December 1974), his merchant since the beginning. This somber El Greco looking man with a beard, was all his life known as Bernard Buffet’s galerist and never let him down. The gallery is still on avenue Matignon. He was the most discreet and dark character.

Bernard Buffet lived in this farm of Nanse, in Provence in the 1950’s

As I left the museum of Modern art on this sunny morning, Pierre Bergé appeared dressed in a pink jacket and on a wheel chair surrounded by three beautiful men. The circle of their love life was closed.

La Mort 16, 1999, one of 24 paintings of death found in his studio after he died

This show is probably the most striking revelation at the moment in Paris. An artist who was always considered as slightly too popular shows how grand his talent was. A revelation and a pure delight! (until February 26, 2017, Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris)