Bernard Buffet

“Painting and politeness should never be confused. [...] You don’t talk about painting, you don’t analyze it — you feel it.”
— Bernard Buffet, 1964

Born in Paris in 1928, Bernard Buffet is one of the most emblematic French painters of the 20th century. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts, he rose to prominence at a very young age with a stark, immediately recognizable style: elongated figures, angular lines, and a restrained palette serving an expressive, often harrowing vision.

His work, both realistic and introspective, explores themes of solitude, faith, war, the body, and mortality with unwavering discipline. Shaped by the trauma of postwar Europe, Buffet painted a wounded world with radical honesty.

A mystic as much as a craftsman, he described himself not as inspired, but as "hardworking." His uncompromising gaze, turned both inward and outward, made him a singular witness to the anxieties of his time.