Bernard Buffet (; 10 July 1928 – 4 October 1999) was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor. An extremely prolific artist, he produced a varied and extensive body of work. His style was exclusively figurative and is often classified as Expressionist or "miserabilist".
Bernard Buffet was a student at the Lycée Carnot during the Nazi occupation of Paris. He travelled to drawings courses in the evenings despite the curfew imposed by the Nazi authorities. He then studied art at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (National School of the Fine Arts) and worked in the studio of the painter Eugène Narbonne. Among his classmates were Maurice Boitel and Louis Vuillermoz. He met the French painter Marie-Thérèse Auffray and was influenced by her work.
Buffet's mother, Blanche, died from breast cancer in 1945. Seventeen-year-old Buffet was devastated, and losing his mother at an early age remained a source of melancholy throughout his life.
Rise to fame
thumb|Charles de Gaulle by Buffet
As a painter, Buffet produced religious pieces, landscapes, portraits and still-lifes. Influenced by Francis Gruber, he often painted "Miserabilist" scenes of despair, including scenes of poverty and Holocaust victims, but he also portrayed subjects as varied as ashtrays, clowns, and table lamps. His work was characterized by thick black lines, elongated forms, and a lack of depth of field.
An extremely prolific painter, he had at least one major exhibition every year. By the age 26, it was said that he had completed more paintings than Pierre-Auguste Renoir's lifetime output. A 1956 magazine photograph of Buffet being helped into his car by the chauffeur was a particular turning point in the public's views of him. Additionally, Buffet's critical reputation was affected by his tremendous and sometimes indiscriminate output. In the 1990s, he claimed he had completed a painting a day for more than four decades. In the words of one art historian, many of these works were "unequivocally bad".
Buffet created more than 8,000 paintings and many prints as well.
Personal life and death
Buffet was bisexual, and his paintings have been noted for their homoerotic themes. In 1958, Bergé left Buffet for Yves Saint Laurent. Daughter Virginie was born in 1962; daughter Danielle, in 1963; and son Nicolas, in 1973.
Buffet died by suicide at his home in Tourtour, southern France, on 4 October 1999.
Legacy
In the 21st century, there has been a renewed spike in interest in the work of Buffet. His work is particularly popular in Asia and former Soviet Union nations.