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special exhibition 2023: Savor Our Buffet

After the end of World War II, a young painter blazed like a comet across the world of French art. His grey and chestnut palette, the sharp, black contours, incised like scars from wounds in the picture plane, the deeply creased faces and thin, elongated figures, the uncanny placement of objects, the towns with no people . . . his paintings were filled with the emptiness and nihilism of the post-war period. Once seen, they were unforgettable. This style, established before Bernard Buffet turned twenty, made him a truly “one-and-only” artist. Buffet would continue painting for five decades. His lines and palette changed. His choice of subjects widened. But every work was shot through with his “Buffet style.”

The young Buffet was the darling of his times. He experienced the painter’s joy and suffering throughout his twentieth-century life. In this exhibition, we include works from his early period to the end of that life, allowing us to observe the consistency of the Buffet style through its many transformations. In its variety of themes and subjects, we can savor all the flavors of Buffet’s art, life, and character.