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BERNARD BUFFET , PARIS, 1928 - TOURTOUR, 1999 Treboul, le clocher et le rue Vieille (Finistère) Oil on canvas 89.5 x 130.2 cm In a subtle balance, the facades of this Breton street respond to each other in their masses and designs. The steeply sloping street they border is split into two sections separated by a parapet. Occupying each side of the picture, asymmetrically, the rows of houses line up straight on the right but are spaced out on the left, separated by a porch opening onto a courtyard. Through this gap, a light enters which, in its progression, casts exaggeratedly long shadows on the ground. The painter has stretched these shadows to counterbalance the slender silhouettes of the trees and the bell tower of St John's chapel, which stand in the centre of the picture. In the grid of abscissae and ordinates that is his custom, Bernard Buffet traces, aligns and squares his canvas with his rectilinear drawing. If, in this landscape, his black and incisive line is more discreet, we can guess it, underlying, in the order of his structured, almost orthogonal drawing. It is also in the choice of a palette shaded in grey that we find the sobriety of the painter. The cold dark green mass of the foliage is matched by the warmer shades of ochre and khaki of the granite blocks that form the edges of the buildings. The only element spared from the addition of grey is the azure sky crossed by white clouds, translating the luminosity of a summer day in Brittany. Bernard Buffet (1928-99) is undoubtedly one of the most prolific French painters of his generation, touching on everything from watercolours to lithography. He started painting at a very early age, entering the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris at 15 and exhibiting his first painting three years later. Success came quickly. His style, very characteristic, is defined by a black and angular graphics which circles the forms and often streaks his backgrounds with jerky hatching. His signature is like a manifesto. Described as an expressionist, his nervous line exudes a certain melancholy, as evidenced by his series of portraits of sad clowns that punctuate his career. Portrait painter, landscape painter, still life painter... Buffet tried his hand at every genre and every technique, and always with success. The composition of this landscape follows the same principles of construction as his other paintings, always solidly supported by a masterful drawing. Provenance: Galerie Martal Ltée, Montreal Private collection, Montreal (acquired from the previous one in 1984) Certificate: Galerie Maurice Garnier, Paris. Signatur: Signed upper left and dated upper right; on the reverse titled and inscribed 'AH66'