Bernard Buffet (1928-1999) Still Life With Iron And Candlestick

The miserable post-war period, the one that revealed this Master of figuration who can be classified among the most important artists of the 20th century.
The work in excellent condition is made in oil on canvas, it is presented in an elegant black and gold frame which measures 76 cm by 89 cm, 59 cm by 72 cm for the canvas alone.
It represents a Still Life with an iron, its support, a candlestick and a lamp on a table.
On the back, a label from the Galerie Taménaga in Paris as well as writing on the frame mentioning: "Aberbach Hamburg CMBN".
The work is signed and dated 1947 at the top right.
A certificate from the Maurice Garnier Gallery accompanies the work.

Decorations

     April 27, 1959: Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters
     December 23, 1970: Knight in the National Order of the Legion of Honor.
     August 10, 1973: Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters.
     March 29, 1993: Officer in the National Order of the Legion of Honor.
     For Gérald Schurr, “the most sought-after works are and will always remain the canvases from the years 1945-1955. Buffet, painter of the difficulty of being, remains as the symbol of miserabilist expressionism, and it is his paintings from this first period, his meager and desolate still lifes, betraying the anxiety of man in the aftermath of the Second World War, that posterity will retain.
     On June 20, 2007, Vladimir Veličković, who succeeded him at the Academy of Fine Arts, pronounced his eulogy under the Dome: “What immediately caught my attention was the line of the drawing, this way of using the pencil or the pen like a scalpel. There was there, with an extreme economy of means, a graphic, but also plastic and pictorial efficiency quite singular, and this efficiency seemed to me so great, so obvious, that it justified an expression generally used lightly when one speaks of the "execution" of a work. Yes, Bernard Buffet literally executed his works”.
     The large Provençal estate, comprising an 18th century farmhouse, waterfalls and natural rivers, has become a luxury hotel belonging to the Sibuet group. After some legal difficulties, the group sold La Baume and the new owner couple intends to open a luxury accommodation.

     · This painter of verticality is a loner with whom it is difficult to build bridges of exchange. -Georges Hourdin, 1958
     · “Don't trust it. A still life by Buffet is dead with only one eye and ready to bite. The household arts utensils become, in his hands of a pale executioner dressed in red, instruments of torture capable of making people talk, at all costs. -Jean Cocteau, 1959
     · “The tragic painter of the human condition…” - Maurice Druon of the French Academy, 1964
     · “Buffet represents a miserabilism very different from that of Francis Gruber. It aims at the observation, in the raw state, which the artist nevertheless establishes with the help of graphics of undeniable quality, and whose style is tirelessly repeated. He appears at the beginning as a witness to this absurdity put forward by the theories of Jean-Paul Sartre, when he places his characters in a bare but closed space, without any particular involvement, and restored by an articulation of very simple large shots. The means are also simplified to the extreme: a design which gives the motifs an elementary, angular synthesis, and which limits by its thick outlines a dull, if not poor, color based on grays and earths. But in the great themes treated, Buffet's indifference towards the "subject" finally distanced him from any miserable intention. - René Huyghe of the French Academy and Jean Rudel, 1970
     · “He has different works, others difficult, without however engaging in the slightest research and he has produced masterpieces. I declared some time ago and I repeat it: “We will have lived in the century of Bernard Buffet”… Buffet is a born painter. Only a painter, a real painter, can play with a virtuosity that comes from the prodigy of these perfect accords of gray and white underlined by black lines, hatching or lines. Derain, among others, considered him a great painter… In 1950, during an annual exhibition of Bernard Buffet, I saw him turning slowly around the room and going from one canvas to another without his face expressing the slightest reaction. Flattered by this unexpected visit and curious to know what the great man thought of a young man who was already much talked about, I approached him: "Dare I ask you what you think of Bernard Buffet?" So Derain turned his Roman-masked face towards me and said, 'This boy is doing at twenty what I would like to do at my age.'" - Emmanuel David, 1978
     · “The pain concentrated in those faces scratched my heart, I was overwhelmed. Why did this loner, this bashful, decide to scream his anguish? Revolt or need to be loved? - Annabel Buffet, 1982
     · “Despite all the panache with which they (the bullfighters) strut under the relentless sun of the arena and the beam of light from the spotlights of the marquee, one can read between the lines of their wrinkles and in the dark circles of their eyes a stage fright which borders on sadness. We guess there some painful dealing with bad luck. -Yann Le Pichon, 1986
     · "The critics, even the most unconditional of Bernard Buffet, agree to privilege his "miserable" period, which they place between 1947 and 1950, his plastic means, in spite of the changes

Works in Museums:

Australia
National Museum of Victoria, Melbourne:
Owl, oil on canvas 60x100xm, 1950.
Still life by the fireplace, oil on canvas 114x146cm, 1952.
Fish on a plate, lithograph 38x56 cm, 1953.

Canada
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa:
The schoolyard, drypoint 56x76cm.
National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec, Quebec:
The human voice, 23 drypoint and chisel engravings
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

UNITED STATES
Art Institute of Chicago:
Sketch for the Passion, drawing 46x76cm, 1954.
The lighthouse, drypoint 56x76Ccm.
Museum of Biblical Art, Dallas.
Museum of Modern Art, New York:
Still life with fish, oil on canvas 41.6 x 85.1 cm, 194996.
Thistles, lithograph, 195297.
National Gallery of Art, Washington98:
Monegasque landscape, drypoint 38x50cm, 1953.
Departure of the fishing boats, drypoint 56x76cm, 1962.
Toreador, drypoint 76x56cm, 1967.
Saint-Germain-des-Prés, drypoint 25.7x20cm, 1970.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington:
New York, lithograph, Fernand Mourlot workshop, 196799.

France
Bernard Magrez Cultural Institute, Bordeaux100.
Roger Quilliot Art Museum, Clermont-Ferrand.
Ochier Museum, Cluny (Saône-et-Loire):
Portrait of the Cluny painter Prud'hon60.
Modern Art Museum of the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud:
View of Manhattan, oil on canvas, 1958101.
Palace of Fine Arts in Lille.
Cantini Museum, Marseilles:
The Dead Rooster, oil on canvas, 1947.
Mucem - Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations, Marseille:
Dante's Inferno - The Damned Caught in the Ice, oil on canvas, 1976102.
Courbet Museum, Ornans103.
Department of Prints and Photography of the National Library of France:
The two fish, drypoint, 197940.
City of Paris Museum of Modern Art104:
Still life with fish, oil on canvas 54x65cm, 1948.
The painter and his model, oil on canvas 211x117cm, 1948.
The drinker, oil on canvas 100x65cm, 1948105.
The net mender, oil on canvas 200x308cm, 1948105.
Nude standing, oil on canvas 112x94n5cm, 1949.
Three nudes, oil on canvas 191x225cm, 1949.
Still life with revolver, oil on canvas 60x81cm.
Portrait of Doctor Maurice Girardin, oil on canvas 55x48cm, 1949.
Self-portrait, oil on canvas 92x65cm, 1949.
Naked woman on a sofa, oil on canvas 46x65cm, 1949.
Still life with grapes, oil on canvas 54x65cm, 1949.
Still life with basket, oil on canvas 38x55cm, 1949.
The Skinned Ox, oil on canvas 195x130cm, 1950.
The birds, the raptor, oil on canvas 240x335cm, 1959.
Annabel with a mat, oil on canvas 130x81cm, 1960105.
Château de la Vallée, etching 56x76cm, circa 1963.
The beaches, the parasol, oil on canvas 200x524cm, 1967.
Les Folles, women in the living room, oil on canvas 200x300cm, 1970.
Beaumont, the church, etching 56x76cm, 1977.
La Ponche, etching 56x76cm, 1978.
Île Saint-Louis, lithograph 55x73cm.
Death 5, oil on canvas 195x114cm, 1999.
National Museum of Modern Art, Paris106:
Pieta, oil on canvas 172x255cm, 1946.
Still life with cheese and jug, oil on canvas 60x92cm, 1949.
The alcohol stove, Indian ink and watercolor 50x65cm, 1949.
Interior, oil on canvas 196x270cm, 1950.
Two heads of sheep and wine on a table, oil on canvas 89x130cm, 1952.
Self-portrait on a white background, oil on canvas 130x97cm, 1955.
Portrait of Jean Cocteau, oil on canvas 123x79cm, 1955.
Breton Departmental Museum, Quimper:
La Bretonne, 1950 (on loan from the Roger Quilliot Art Museum in Clermont-Ferrand)62.
Saint-Cast - Memories of childhood, suite of 23 drypoints 50.5x66cm for a poem by Charles Baudelaire, 1962107.
Estrine Museum, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
Troyes Museum of Modern Art.
LaM, Villeneuve-d'Ascq urban park:
Stoning, oil on canvas 202x96cm, 1948108.
Reclining nude, oil on canvas 95x213cm



Japan
Bernard-Buffet Museum, inaugurated on November 25, 1973, founded by Kiichiro Okano (1917-1995), in Higashino, Nagaizumi commune, Shizuoka prefecture. In 1988, the extension of the museum was inaugurated.