Bernard Buffet - Engraver (1928-1999) Yves Brayer Museum Les Baux-de-Provence April 30th –September 27th, 2012

Bernard Buffet - Engraver (1928-1999) Yves Brayer Museum Les Baux-de-Provence April 30th –September 27th, 2012

Just after turning twenty in 1949, Bernard Buffet was awarded the “Prix de la Critique” in Paris. This distinction, by its innovation and its originality, draws attention to the timid young man. The violence of his subjects is an echo to the dramas and the sufferings of the Second World War. As Vladimir Velickovic, his successor at the Academy of the Fine arts, mentioned, “the war had indeed produced an irreversible break of the artistic scene where nothing would never be the same.. However Bernard Buffet brought and imposed a painter’s solution, not just the speech of an ideologist”. As one of the most significant figurative painters of the 20th century, Buffet stands out through his dark compositions and "his astonishing religious writing of manta" as Jean Cocteau described him. The Yves Brayer Museum presents three series of engravings adorned with texts that although rarely exhibited, are hise most famous pieces.

*COCTEAU’S HUMAN VOICE: A woman suffers from separation, she is feverish and in great distress. Jean Cocteau, brilliant manipulator of situations and words, expresses in this short scene the extreme anxiety and despair that are emphasized by the distance and the poor telephone line quality.

**DANTE’S INFERNO: In this most powerful and most spectacular series, Bernard Buffet illustrates the characters of the Divine Comedy, showing the anguish and the suffering of the damned souls.

***LADIES’ GAMES: The beauty and the rhythm of selected poems from Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Verlaine appealed to the artist. The sternness of the drawing and the ambiguity of the subject, often displayed in his nude compositions, tells of a particular moment between two friends.