Bernard Buffet | Expressionist painter

Bernard Buffet (1928-1999) was a French painter of Expressionism and a member of the anti-abstract art group L'homme Témoin (the Witness-Man).

Bernard Buffet represents a typical demonstration of the divorce between the French and Contemporary Art.

Popular artist by excellence, Bernard Buffet loved by the public is however detested by elitists whom hold against him his prolixity: 8,000 paintings, water colors,drawings, lithographs and engravings.

Johann Sebastian Bach: "La musica aiuta a non sentire dentro il silenzio che c’è fuori"!

• "Tre cose sono necessarie per un buon pianista: la testa, il cuore e le dita".

• "La perfezione si raggiunge per gradi".

• "Ai miei occhi ed alle mie orecchie l’organo è il re di tutti gli strumenti".

• "La musica non è nelle note, la musica è tra le note".

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• "Buffone è chi non ride mai".

• "Ogni difficoltà su cui si sorvola, diventa un fantasma che turberà i nostri sonni".

Johann Sebastian Bach (1714-1788), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) e Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Léon Pilet | Un Coup de vent, 1888

Léon Pilet (1836-1916) was a French sculptor and medalist, known for his classical subjects in bronze.

Pilet also produced male and female figurines from clay, marble and ivory. Many of his works depict religious as well as historical figures.

Pilet presented "Le Coup de vent" during the Paris Universal Exposition of 1888, now at the Musée Granet - Aix-en-Provence.

The artist continued to exhibit at the Salon from 1861 to 1914.

Bernard Boutet de Monvel | Art déco artist

Bernard Boutet de Monvel (1881-1949) was a French painter, sculptor, engraver, fashion illustrator and interior decorator. Although first known for his etchings, he earned notability for his paintings, especially his geometric paintings from the 1900s and his Moroccan paintings made during World War I.

In both Europe and the United States, where he often traveled, he also became known as a portrait painter for high society clients.

Boutet de Monvel was simultaneously working in oil painting, especially portraits, which he began to exhibit at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1903.

Jacques-Eugène Feyen | Genre painter

Jacques-Eugène Feyen (1815-1908) was a French painter and photographer.

The elder brother of painter Auguste Feyen-Perrin, Jacques-Eugène enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts and studied under Paul Delaroche.

He had a notable career at the Paris Salon from 1841 to 1882, where won medals in 1866 and 1880.

In 1881 he was decorated with the Legion of Honor.

Geneviève Daël, 1947 | Interior scenes painter

Geneviève Daël was born in Paris and continues to live and work in Montmartre.

She studied Decorative Arts at the Académie Charpentier.

After a brief period spent living in London she returned to Paris, where she began to study painting independently, and worked as a model for Dior while developing her artistic practice.

Alexis Le Borgne, 1995 | Watercolor painter

Alexis Le Borgne is an award-winning French-Vietnamese professional artist based in France.

He describes his art as evolving with time and being marked by continuous questioning and desire to learn in perpetuity.

From still lifes to interior scenes, as well as the animal world, imaginary landscapes and character settings, each of Le Borgne's subjects "brings its stone to the edifice", helping him to better understand and grasp the world around him.

Oreste Cortazzo | Painter of the Belle Époque

Oreste Cortazzo (1836, Rome - 1910, Paris) was an Italian-born French painter, graphic artist and illustrator.

His family originally came from Ceraso, in the Province of Salerno.

Around 1848, he began an apprenticeship with his father, Michele (1808-1865), who was also a painter and a great admirer of Titian. (Some of Michele's works may be seen at the Palace of Caserta, near Naples.)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Tête de jeune fille coiffée d'un chapeau de jardin, 1895

"I have taken up again, never to abandon it, my old style, soft and light of touch", Renoir wrote to his dealer Durand-Ruel in 1888, full of enthusiasm for his latest efforts.

"This is to give you some idea of my new and final manner of painting - like Fragonard, but not so good" (quoted in J. House, Renoir in the Barnes Foundation, New Haven, 2012, p. 121).

Renoir's new approach represented a sea-change after the controversial Ingres-inspired method he cultivated in the previous decade.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Tête de jeune fille coiffée d'un chapeau de jardin, 1895 | Christie's

Adrien Moreau | Genre painter

Adrien Moreau (1843-1906) was a French genre and historical painter, sculptor and illustrator.

Moreau was born in Troyes in Aube department.

He began his artistic training as an apprentice glassmaker, but left for Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts under Léon Cogniet and Isidore Pils.

150 years of the First Impressionist Exhibition, 1874-2024

150 years ago, on April 15, 1874, a group of artists called the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc. organized an exhibition in Paris that launched the movement called Impressionism.

Its founding members included Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro, among others.

Thirty-one artists had gathered to hold their own art fair, outside the official Salon, in a declaration of independence that marked the birth of a groundbreaking art movement.

Claude Monet | Impression, Sunrise, 1872 | Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet

Marcel Rieder | Academic painter

Marcel Rieder (1862-1942) was a French painter.

He was born in Thann. Rieder came from a distinguished family in Alsace; his grandfather Jean Jacques Rieder (1778-1852) was a minister of the Temple Neuf Protestant church in Strasbourg.

Marcel Rieder studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

He became a member of the Société des Artistes Français in 1894, and exhibited almost every year until 1939 in the Salon de Paris.

Jean Hélion | Modern painter

Jean Hélion (1904-1987) was a French painter whose abstract work of the 1930s established him as a leading modernist.

His midcareer rejection of abstraction was followed by nearly five decades as a figurative painter.

He was also the author of several books and an extensive body of critical writing.

He was born at Couterne, Orne, the son of a taxi driver and a dressmaker.

Bazoche | Romantic painter

A self-taught painter based in the Périgord Noir, Bazoche managed to combine his two passions: comics and painting.

In a style imbued with a certain naivety, his paintings are always the pretext to tell stories, sometimes nostalgic, sometimes romantic, sometimes dramatic, but the viewer always has his place to tell his own story...

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Tête de jeune fille, 1882

Painted in 1882, "Tête de jeune fille" dates from a key period of transition within Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s career.

It was at the beginning of that year that the pioneering Impressionist dealer Paul Durand-Ruel had begun to purchase Renoir’s work, granting the artist a new level of professional and financial security, which in turn enabled him to travel abroad for the first time.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Tête de jeune fille, 1882 | Christie's

Françoise Gilot (1921-2023)

A French artist of the post-World War II School of Paris, Françoise Gilot is perhaps most famous as a muse and lover to Pablo Picasso.

While her story may be inextricably linked to 20th century art’s most towering figure, Gilot’s remarkable life and vast oeuvre deserves recognition on its own merits.

In a career spanning over seven decades, Gilot’s distinct language of form and color reveals an enduring preoccupation with both the personal and universal forces of nature, time, space and mythology.

Le Yack, 1972 | Pop urban art

Alexandre Pelletier, also known as "Le Yack", is a talented native of Tours.

He first graduated in design and arts, then in communication, and was naturally attracted by graphic design.

He chose to devote his professional career to it. Art director in publishing and web for over 20 years, he evolves daily in the middle of images and stories.

During the Covid crisis, Alexandre feels the need to find a new space of expression and launches himself into "graffiti painting". Just 2 years later, "Le Yack" is already exhibiting at the gallery "l'Empreinte" in Orleans.

Ismaël Costa, 1965

Coming from a family from Barcelona in Spain, Ismaël has lived in Provence since the age of nine.

His childhood was devoted to the practice of drawing, and more particularly to the genre of comic strips which he was fond of.

As a teenager, his interest led him more towards the study of portraits.

Ismaël began working at the age of sixteen, first as a designer for a publishing house, then as an illustrator in a Parisian communications agency.

Claire Denarie-Soffietti, 1923

Born and raised in Versailles, Claire Denarie-Soffietti was an autodidactic art student from the outset.

After eight years living in Barbados and four children, the artist and her husband (an Italian architect) decided to settle for good and now reside in beautiful Dolphin Coast of South Africa.

Denarie works have evolved over the years.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: "Il dolore passa ma la bellezza rimane"

• "Un giorno, mentre dipingevo un paesaggio nei pressi di Algeri [marzo 1881], vidi avvicinarsi un uomo che sembrava vestito di porpora e di panno d'oro...

Quando il viaggiatore mi raggiunse, la mia illusione svanì; il mio emiro non era altro che un mendicante rosicchiato.

Il sole, il sole divino, lo aveva arricchito con la sua luce...

È sempre così in Algeria.

La magia del sole trasmuta le palme in oro, l'acqua sembra piena di diamanti e gli uomini diventano i Re d'Oriente".