La Baume, l'atelier de gravure, 1997
Oil on canvas, signed and dated lower left.
130 x 97 cm
Provenance:
Private collection, France
Certificate of authenticity issued by the Bernard Buffet Endowment Fund.
In this 1997 painting, Bernard Buffet opens the doors to his engraving studio at La Baume, his final residence in Provence. The space is orderly: the large press, the chairs, the easel, and the table with its plates reveal a workplace that is both intimate and disciplined.
Far from his dramatic figures or urban landscapes, Buffet here chose to depict his everyday surroundings, as if to fix the image of the studio where he continued creating until the very end of his life. La Baume, acquired in the early 1980s, was both a refuge and a place of intense production.
In 1997, Maurice Garnier devoted an exhibition to this house and Buffet’s domestic universe, underlining how La Baume and its studio remained at the heart of his inspiration. This painting thus stands as a precious testimony, in which the artist stages the very theater of his own creation.