Bernard Buffet

BERNARD BUFFET (Paris, 1928 – Tourtour, France, 1999).
"Still Life," 1977.
Oil on canvas.
Signed at the bottom and dated in the lower right corner.
In good condition.
Measurements: 110 x 137 cm.

Painted in 1977, this large-scale painting belongs to a period of full artistic maturity for Bernard Buffet, one of the leading exponents of postwar French expressionist figuration. Still life has played a central role in his career since the late 1940s, when his austere and highly dramatic compositions of everyday objects helped define his unmistakable artistic language. During the 1970s, the artist revitalized this genre through greater chromatic freedom, a richer pictorial texture, and increasingly monumental compositions, revisiting traditional motifs that he transformed through an intensely expressive interpretation.

This composition brings together a rich array of fruits and objects arranged on a table with a pronounced diagonal perspective. A large basket of grapes dominates the scene, accompanied by scattered bunches, pears, lemons, and a glass of red berries. The arrangement of the elements establishes a complex balance between accumulation and order, while the black, angular, and incisive lines define the volumes and lend the composition an extraordinary graphic tension. The deep greens, luminous yellows, and intense reds are hallmarks of the painting, contrasting with the white surfaces and the dark background, creating an atmosphere of great visual power. The impasto brushwork and textures reveal a painting in which drawing retains its central role, while acquiring greater material and gestural freedom.

The work also establishes a dialogue with the European tradition of still life, which Buffet reinterprets from an unmistakably modern sensibility. In contrast to the serenity of classical still lifes, he introduces forced perspectives and intense hallmarks that transform familiar objects into almost monumental presences.

Bernard Buffet was a key figure in the 20th-century French figurative revival. Trained at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris, he won the Critics’ Prize in 1948, achieving recognition at an extraordinarily early age. His painting, characterized by incisive line work and an intense expressionist dimension, remained outside the dominant abstract trends. In 1958, he was the subject of a major retrospective at the Galerie Charpentier in Paris, and in 1974 he was elected a member of the Académie des beaux-arts. In 1973, the Bernard Buffet Museum, dedicated to his work, opened in Japan. His career was the subject of a major retrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris in 2016–2017; that institution holds works by him, as does the Centre Pompidou in Paris.