SIGNED BY BERNARD BUFFET

BUFFET, Bernard. La Révolution Française. (Lausanne: Les “Éditions André Sauret, 1978). Oblong folio, original illustrated limp paper boards. $500.

First edition, with seven color plates of paintings by Bernard Buffet, most double page, boldly signed by the artist in pencil.

To his admirers, artist Bernard Buffet was “pure genius.” (Time Magazine). His “adolescent ambiance had been the grey times of deprivation when the Germans were in Paris, [and he] developed his style, now so familiar, in the solitude of a room in the Batignolles quarter, winning his first success in 1948 (Prix de la Critique)… The starkness and essential simplicity of his work, with its strange nostalgia for the hardship of the war years France had suffered, brought him immediate… fame. This should not blind us to his real merit and originality, revealed above all in his book illustrations” (The Artist and the Book in France, 144). Architectural in construction, superbly drawn, and carefully composed, these pictures are representative of Buffet’s trademark use of strong blacks and muted grays, but in this case suffused with the revolutionary colors of blue, white, and red. “Concerning painting,” he insists, “we do not talk about it, we do not analyze it, we feel it” (Artist and the Book, 36). Text in French.

A fine signed copy.