BUFFET Bernard

Bernard BUFFET (1928–1999)

Title: Loctudy (Finistère) – The Peninsula at Low Tide
Date: 1973
Medium: Original poster, printed by Draeger
Dimensions: 54 × 80 cm (without margins)

Description and Critical Analysis

In this 1973 poster, Bernard Buffet captures the maritime landscape of Brittany, depicting the port of Loctudy at low tide. The artist deploys his unmistakable pictorial language, defined by incisive black contours, rigid volumes, and a graphic structure that infuses the composition with dramatic tension.

The grounded boats, heavy and motionless, stand as silent signs, in sharp contrast to the implied animation of the cloudy sky and the birds crossing it. The severity of the lines, combined with a restrained palette — deep greens, earthy browns, metallic grays, piercing blues — gives the scene a solemn, almost melancholic atmosphere.

Buffet avoids the picturesque charm often associated with the Breton coast. Instead, he presents a lyrical austerity, where the architectural rigidity of the white-gabled houses collides with untamed nature. This landscape is not a mere setting but an existential echo, where solitude and tragedy surface in every stroke.

Biographical Note

Bernard Buffet was born in Paris in 1928. A student at the École des Beaux-Arts by the age of fifteen, he exhibited his first self-portrait at the Salon des Moins de Trente Ans in 1946. The following year, he showed at the Salon des Indépendants, where the French State purchased one of his works for the Musée National d’Art Moderne — an early sign of recognition.

His rise was meteoric: awarded the Prix de la Critique in 1948, he was named the “best postwar painter” in 1955 by the influential art magazine Connaissance des arts. An uncompromising expressionist, Buffet developed an instantly recognizable style: hieratic figures, rigid faces, and landscapes defined by sharp contours, expressing a vision of the world both stark and dramatic.

In 1974, he became the youngest member ever elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. His work achieved worldwide acclaim, leading to major exhibitions across the globe, and even a dedicated museum in Japan.

Stricken with Parkinson’s disease, Bernard Buffet took his own life in 1999 in his studio in Tourtour. Today, his oeuvre endures as one of the most powerful expressions of postwar European art, bridging expressionism and a frozen modernity — a legacy reaffirmed by the major retrospective held at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2016–2017.