Bernard Buffet – Le Moulin Rouge

Description

Bernard Buffet, Le Moulin Rouge is an original etching on Rives BFK paper. Bernard Buffet, Le Moulin Rouge is signed in the lower right and numbered in the lower left. Published by ‘Editions Lacouriere et Frelaut Galerie Maurice Garnier’, and printed by Atelier Lacouriere et Frelaut. Rheims 67.

Bernard Buffet was a French Expressionist painter. Best known for his representational work, Buffet’s paintings are often figurative, graphic, and central in their compositions. A bold rejecter of abstract art altogether, Buffet was a member of the anti-abstraction group L’homme Témoin, or the Witness-Man, which passionately argued for the importance of representational art at a time when abstraction began to dominate the critical conversation. His oeuvre revolved around ideas of art history, death, sexuality, popular culture, and politics while often directly referencing contemporary events and artists. Buffet had an extremely prolific career, painting over 8,000 works and garnering widespread popularity and acclaim, including dozens of international exhibitions and honors such as being inducted into the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1974.

Born in Paris in 1928, Bernard Buffet came of age under the Nazi occupation. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, and by the age of 19 had had his first solo show. Buffet’s was an austere vision of the world that chimed perfectly with the atmosphere of post-war alienation championed by the fashionable existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. It earned him immediate popular acclaim and in 1948, at the age of 20, Bernard Buffet was awarded the prestigious Prix de la Critique.

Bernard Buffet Le Moulin Rouge is defined by “dry” straight lines revealing the shape of buildings and bodies. Bernard Buffet works show elongated, emaciated figures and structures and lend a feeling of despair and loneliness. Buffet shows Paris itself, traditionally portrayed as lively and colorful, in a hard and lifeless manner.

Buffet had an extremely prolific career, painting over 8,000 works and garnering widespread popularity and acclaim, including dozens of international exhibitions and honors such as being inducted into the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1974.

Buffet took his own life after a prolonged battle with Parkinson’s disease on October 4, 1999 in Tourtour, France at the age of 71.

Bernard Buffet, Le Moulin Rouge

Bernard Buffet, Le Moulin Rouge