Bernard Buffet Museum

This museum houses and exhibits the works of French painter Bernard Buffet. His unique style is characterized by black lines and monotone colors.

The museum’s collection of approximately 2,000 works, including oil paintings, watercolors, prints, illustrated books, and posters, is the largest in the world in terms of quality and quantity.

Visitors can view works from Buffet’s early years to his later years, and more than 100 Buffet works are always on display.

The adjoining Buffet Children’s Museum is a hands-on museum that provides an opportunity for children to encounter art.

Bernard Buffet

A French painter born in Paris in 1928. He is known as one of the leading figurative painters of the post-World War II era.

From childhood, he had a poor relationship with his family, and especially after the death of his mother in his teens, he spent his days working on his canvases in solitude.

In 1943, he entered the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and in 1948, he won the most prestigious prize for newcomers and critics in Paris. It was around this time that his reputation as a prodigious painter began to grow.

Buffet’s works are characterized by hard, sharp, thick, wire-like outlines and near-monotone colors, and often depict figures with anxious expressions. His paintings expressed the anxieties and bleak emotional landscapes of the postwar era.

In addition, his wife Annabelle appears as a model for many of the female figures. In addition to oil paintings, he also produced excellent prints.

Buffet was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1971 and became a member of the Académie Française in 1974.

However, because of his early fame, his later works were sometimes noted for their tendency toward mannerisms. In his later years, he suffered from Parkinson’s disease and took his own life at the age of 71.

His works were introduced in Japan early on, and the Bernard Buffet Museum was opened in 1973.