Bernard Buffet: Infinite Jester

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Sotheby’s S|2 is pleased to present Bernard Buffet: Infinite Jester, a selling exhibition of oil paintings and works on paper by the renowned French artist Bernard Buffet (1928–1999). Featuring works from every major period of his career, the exhibition focuses on the artist’s series of iconic imagery including clowns, still lives, animals and leisure scenes. On view at Sotheby’s Hong Kong Gallery from 14 – 24 September, Infinite Jester coincides with the opening of several international museum exhibitions as well as the recent release of a biography on the artist.

About Bernard Buffet
A painterly alchemist with an enigmatic mega-celebrity, Bernard Buffet skyrocketed to artistic celebrity when, at eighteen, he showed his first painting at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts, followed by his inclusion in the Musée National d’Art Moderne the next year. The public clamored for his resolutely figurative works, and by many he was perceived to be the next great artist to follow in the succession of world-famous Pablo Picasso.

Yet in the decades that followed, Buffet was publicly shunned and ridiculed by influential art world figures, including Picasso, in France, where he was seen to be over-producing his commercial artwork. In the 1990s, he received a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, which eventually rendered him unable to work and the year 1999 saw Buffet create his final series of works – an example of which is included in Sotheby’s exhibition – completed and displayed together before his suicide that year.

Photography from Sotheby's

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