From July 6, 2024
to September 28, 2024

From July 6, Marseille's Galerie Alexis Pentcheff will be devoting an exhibition and sale to the painter Bernard Buffet (1928-1999). 
“Bernard Buffet autrement” is the title of this event, orchestrated by Nicolas Buffet, the artist's son, who has chosen to take a fresh look at his father's work, dictated not only by his admiration for the painter's work (to whom he was admitted in the secrecy of the studio) but also by his own vision as an accomplished artist, both free and demanding. Some twenty pieces will be on show at the gallery until the end of September.

A major artist of the 20th century, Bernard Buffet is one of the leading exponents of French figurative painting. A young painter acclaimed by the critics, Buffet's consecration was followed by a long period in the wilderness: for a long time, he was banished from the institutions of his native country, largely absent from cultural programming, while in Japan, a museum dedicated to his work was opened in the 1970s, on the initiative of a collector and unconditional patron of his work.

Collectors, both French and foreign, have always been fascinated by Buffet's work, drawn by the power of his formal expression.
On the bangs of the artistic establishment, Buffet's work has also been widely disseminated by modern means, touching every stratum of society and leaving a lasting imprint on our collective memory. In recent years, a re-reading of his work has begun. Buffet is back on the institutional map and, thanks to recent exhibitions, is being presented in a favorable light, as one of those who paved the way for contemporary artists. For some, he is even seen as a punk, more subversive and provocative in his pursuit of the figurative gesture than the most militant of artistic agitators. 
Could this be one of the “missing links” in twentieth-century French art, one of those whom art history sometimes recognizes and enshrines in retrospect?

The challenge was to show Bernard Buffet “differently”, in our own venue. We gave Nicolas Buffet, the artist's son, carte blanche and full confidence to take over the Pavillon de la Reine Jeanne, and tell a story that was close to his heart, among all those dictated by his memories and his closeness to the painter.
Nicolas's tender and admiring view of his father's work is coupled with a free and demanding artistic vision, typical of the confirmed musician he has become. Particularly sensitive to the gallery's maritime location, he has chosen to make the Mediterranean voices that inspired Buffet resonate in the calanque, from their most archaic echoes.
In counterpoint, he takes the mischievous step of revealing another facet of the artist's work: by associating large female nudes with bewildered primates on the walls, he throws a bomb while covering his ears, waiting to see what stirrings it will provoke in the sea...

Buffet's brushwork reveals a singular language. Whether it attracts or repels us, crushes or transports us, it speaks to our innermost being with a primitive force.
The extreme formal construction that is the hallmark of this painting dresses the instinctive power of this voice, which more than equals that of the abstraction from which it departs and defends itself.
There's this great forest of strokes, black as trunks, that acts like a theatrical curtain. It reveals misery and horror, but camouflages the underlying tenderness and humor that remain in life and painting, in our awareness of our poor condition.
It is this tension, subterranean, profound, animal, that grips us in Buffet's paintings, the contraction of existence into a useless spasm.

Such is the nature of Buffet's work, which draws on the figurative tradition for its explosive power. But what makes it so special is the invisible but deep breach, like an underwater fault, tragically buried beneath the pictorial crust, right there, where the disenchanted, inconsolable child has taken refuge.

Click here to consult the exhibition catalog:  https://online.fliphtml5.com/xomwq/jzeq/#p=1