Bernard Buffet, born on July 10, 1928 in Paris, is an expressionist painter, composing figures, animals, nudes, landscapes, interiors, still lifes and flowers.

He is also a watercolourist, a set painter and an illustrator.

He is a very prolific artist who has produced a large number of paintings throughout his career.

The artist's pictorial style is easily recognisable with its straight and dry lines. His favourite subjects include the scares of war, mythology and the circus. Most of the figures he portrayed in his paintings expressed pain and sorrow. These faces were often filled with stiff hair and strained foreheads.

He was one of the few artists of his time to gain international recognition during his lifetime. 

A precocious artist, he won the entrance exam to the Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts at the age of 16.

In 1947, he was commissioned by the Musée National d'Art Moderne. In 1948, a contemporary art collector, Maurice Girardin, bought seventeen works from the young artist.

A spectacular start to his career, which the 27-year-old prodigy confirmed by winning first place in the referendum of the magazine "Connaissance des arts" (1955).

Elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1974, Bernard Buffet was promoted to the Légion d'Honneur in 1993. Stricken by Parkinson's disease, he died on 4 October 1999 in Tourtour (Var), leaving behind him more than 8000 works.