The representative master of French post-war figurative art, Bernard Buffet is well renowned in Asia and reaches a global scale of collectors, making him acknowledged as the iconic artist. The young and talented Buffet was awarded the Prix de la Critique at Galerie Saint-Placide in 1948, and named as the best out of the top ten post war artists by “Connaissance des Arts”, in 1955, he was only 27 years old then. In 1958, when he held his first retrospective exhibition, he was praised by the media as the successor of French realism painting. In 1971, Buffet was awarded Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. In 1974, he became an member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Buffet’s artworks are collected by renowned institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art in New York, San Francisco Art Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and the Tate Museum in London. His artworks have been exhibited in Paris, Belgium, Berlin, Tokyo, Geneva, New York, Zurich, and other places. He had a collaboration spanning half a century with galleries such as Gallery Visconti, Galerie David & Garnier, and Galerie Garnier, which were crucial in Bifei's artistic career. The loyal Japanese collector Kiichiro Okano established the world's first Buffet Art Museum in Shizuoka in 1973, with the hope of fostering cultural development through the talent of Buffet, amazingly exhibiting his collection of more than a thousand pieces of Buffet's works.

Bernard Buffet created more than 8,000 works in his life, his amazing creative power has assuredly left a series of classic works. His painting themes predominantly revolve around circus clowns, bullfighters, portraits, landscapes, flowers, and still lifes. Characterized by somber and bitter colors, his works are filled with powerful, sharp, and primitive black contours, as well as distinctive angular shapes that are highly recognizable.

Although his works depict the emptiness and anxiety of the post-war era with an undertone of ambiguity, they are not devoid of refinement. Instead, they inject a glimmer of dawn into numb sadness. Unfortunately, Buffet was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in his later years. After a prolonged battle with the illness, he tragically committed suicide on October 4, 1999, at the age of 71.


Bernard Buffet once described flowers as follows:“Flowers…are woven into our lives with every twist and turn of emotional events. Scarcely born, before we’re even aware of it, we inhale the subtle scents of bouquets offered to the woman who brought us into the world.”

The artwork “Tulipes jaunes” depicts vibrant and resilient leaves with concise and powerful black lines. The leaves seem to break free from the constraints of boundaries, exuding an undeniable vigor that complements the tulips' budding and delicate nature. The warm yellow flowers sway among the green leaves like dancing skirts, enveloping the tenderness within. The bold lines add an aggressive feel to the composition, while the splashes of paint around the vase drip with the vitality of endless plant life. The distinctive signature and style of dating in the upper right corner are unmistakably Buffet's trademarks, not hidden in a corner of the painting but rather serving as a key element in balancing the composition alongside the main subject.