Readers will notice this second blog on Bernard Buffet. Buffet was a well known painter in the late Fifties and Early Sixties, but became out of fashion by the end of that decade. But lately there is a new interest in this painter and i can explain why. HIs gallery , galerie Garnier stayed with him during his career and never lost faith and secondly…..his way of painting in series was a way of producing a large number of paintings and i must say not all are of interest and have enough quality to convince, but there is one quality they have in common. These paintings have a style of their own. The Buffet style is there and it really is a style Buffet developed by himself. This makes these paintings stand out and the truly great ones are paintings one must admire. Perhaps Buffet is not the artist who has rose to absolute fame lije Picasso or Pollock. But his art is still there and with this art Buffet is a name which deserves a place in art history. www.ftn-books.com has added some galerie Garnier exhibtion catalogues and has collected a nice series of exhibition catalogues by Garnier which are still available.
Tag: paris
10 great and iconic buildings, no. 6
This list is invented to make some quick and easy blogs for this month filled with festivities. I chose these specific buildings because i think they belong to the most important from all buildings realized in the last 100 years.
So here is no.6. the Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier

No…., this is not a contemporary house, but one of the first buildings finished in 1931 where Le Corbusier tried to invent a new architecture.
The five points of a new architecture. Formulated by Le Corbusier in 1927 as the fundamental principles of the Modern movement, the five points advocate reinforced concrete for constructing the pilotis, roof garden, open plan design, horizontal windows and free design of the façade – all applied in the design of the Villa Savoye.
The architect. Swiss-born, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (1887-1965), known as Le Corbusier, was part of the Parisian avant-garde. He was a founding member of the International Congress on Modern Architecture (or CIAM), launched in 1928. The Villa is now a museum and can be visited.
www.ftn-books.com has some nice publications on Le Corbusier

Paul César Helleu (1859-1927)
Paul César Helleu was a close and life-long friend of Sargent. According to Stanley Olson, John Singer Sargent bought a pastel from Helleu. “They were constant companions, going everywhere together, having their meals together, seeing each other every day. . .” In a letter to his daughter, Paulette, in December 1922 Helleu wrote, “J’ai voulu faire photographier Sargent qui à été pour moi, tout au long de ma vie, plus qu’un père.”
During the summer of 1889, Sargent had a number of guests to stay at his house at Fladbury near Pershore, including Vernon Lee, Ansttruther Thomson, Flora Priestly, and Paul and Alice Helleu. Helleu’s intimate portrait of his wife at Fladbury was painted in that summer when both he and especially Sargent, were experimenting in Impressionism. Sargent completed among others, Two Girls with Parasols at Fladbury, Fishing, Two Girls in a Punt, A Boating Party, and probably the best know of the Fladbury pictures, Paul Helleu Sketching with His Wife (now in the Brooklyn Museum, New York).
In Patricia Hill’s book John Singer Sargent (New York, 1987), William H. Gerdts writes in his essay entitled “The Arch Apostle of the Dab-and-spot School, John Singer Sargent as an Impressionist”, p. 131: “Finally, Paul Helleu Sketching must be seen as a further step in Sargent’s development of the theme of out-door- painting. Helleu’s canvas is turned away from the spectator, just as it had been in Dennis Bunker Painting. But whereas Bunker was shown ruminating, away from his easel, Paul César Helleu is busily at work, and presumably confidently so. The subject he paints is of no concern nor does the spectator have a view of the scene which might be serving Helleu for his subject. What is certain is that it is an outdoor view, immediately recorded. Moreover, Helleu, like Sargent, was first and foremost a portrait painter, and by definition a portraitist of studio conceptions. Thus, Sargent presents Helleu as a convert to the new method, exploring new thematic interests. And it must be noted that Helleu is depicted doing exactly what Sargent was doing in his picture – painting out-of-doors. Helleu therefore becomes, in a sense, a surrogate Sargent himself, both men established artists in one tradition, sailing off into what was for them relatively uncharted waters.”
www.ftn-books.com has the 1974 Knoedler /New York catalogue available.
Stephen Gilbert ( 1910-2007)
Stephen Gilbert (right, together with Constant)
Stephen Gilbert (15 January 1910 – 12 January 2007) was a painter and sculptor from Scotland. He was one of the few British artists fully to embrace the avant garde movement in Paris in the 1950s.
At one time he even was considered to be one of the members of the COBRA mouvement, but now, some 60 years after COBRA most critics think Gilbert knew the Cobra artists but do not consider him to be one them. Still his paintings and drawings deserve to be appreciated. His almost child like works are close to Cobra, but some of his more abstract works are typical for the end of the Fifties. It really depends upon the work. Some are great art and others are far from that qualification. The galerie 1900-2000 tried to push his works into the art market in 1987 with a special Stephen Gilbert exhibition ( catalogue avaiable at http://www.ftn-books.com), but was not successfull. If you like his works, the works by Stephen Gilbert cab be found at smaller auction houses for still reasonable prices than the great CObra names fetch for thier art.
Eugene de Kermadec (1899-1976)
There is not much information to be found on this french artist, but he was part of the younger generation supported by D.H. Kahnweiler / the Galerie Louise Leiris.
Eugène de Kermadec was born in Paris in 1899. His father, a teacher, was from Guadeloupe, and Eugène spent his childhood there. Returning to Paris in 1915, he trained in sculpture at the Artc Décoratifs, and in drawing at the Beaux-Arts. In 1920, Kermadec became a friend of Soutine’s who gave him several pictures, Modigliani and Desnos were also among his friends. He showed at the Paris Salon des Indépendants in 1920, and in 1927 became one of the Kahnweiller’s regular artists.
The Simon Gallery in Paris showed his work in 1929, but he mainly showed at the Leiris gallery, with exhibits in 1946, 1957, 1973, 1977. Many shows of his work were held abroad as well : Berlin 1929, Tokyo 1933, Toronto 1949, Stuttgart 1960. He was also well known as a tennisman, later becoming an international Tennis umpire. Another of his friend was Francis Ponge whose book “le verre d’eau” he illustrated with lithographs in 1949, of the 110 copies printed, not a single one is to be found today. Eugène de Kermadec died in 1976
I like his art…. it is playfull, filles with color and the abstraction feels far more contemporary than the late Fifties in which his art became well known through the presentations at the galerie Leiris. http://www.ftn-books.com has a galerie Louise Leiris catalogue from 1957 available.
Yasse Tabuchi (1921-2009)
Yasse Tabuchi is a Japanse artist born in Yasukazu Tabuchi on May 20, 1921 in the perfecture of Fukuoka and died on November 24, 2009 (at age 88) in Vauhallan, south Paris. He studied art history at the University of Arts of Tokyo from 1946 to 1951.
Watercolorist, engraver on copper, lithographer and ceramist, Yasse Tabuchi’s paintings belongs to the same line than that of the group of painters called CoBrA, which practiced a lyrical form of abstraction after the war.
He worked in France from 1951 until his death, his Japanase origins and his studies remained a big influence in his work all throughtout his career, which explains why we repeatedly find motifs of flowers, leaves and rainbow’s prisms made of white spots which he calls “Monads”. He uses in a regular way the gold leaf or the diptych shape.
His work has been exhibited numerous times in solo and group exhibitions in France, Japan, Belgium and some of his pieces are part of collections in museums such as the one at the National Museum of Modern Art of Kyoto, Japan or at the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris.
www.ftn-books.com has 2 galerie Ariel publications available.
Bengt Lindström (1925-2008)
Bengt Karl Erik Lindström was a Swedish artist. Lindström was one of Sweden’s best known contemporary artists with a characteristic style of distinct colors, often including contorted faces.
and this is where the item i now can offer comes in. It is the gallery poster for his 1970 Ariel exhibition. truly a contorted face and now available at www.ftn-books.com
Lindström was born in 1925 at Storsjö kapell, Härjedalen, Sweden. In 1944, he moved to Stockholm to study under the Swedish painter Isaac Grünewald. In 1948, he moved to Paris, where he studied under the French painters André Lhote and Fernand Léger. Lindström was influenced by the paintings of COBRA artist Karel Appel.
He remained in France at Savigny sur Orge for the rest of his artistic career. He had two children Mariana and Alexandre. Lindström died in 2008 in Sundsvall, Sweden.
Lindström is probably best known for his outdoor decorations, such as mural paintings and colorful sculptures. One of his most famous sculptures is the massive Y-sculpture at Midlanda Airport north of Sundsvall, Sweden.
Christian Boltanski (1944-1921)
For me personally Boltanski stands for “remembering” and expressing this in gloomy art. The dark side is always present in his art and publications. Now Boltanski is dead and he leaves us with some of the greatest art from the last 50 years.
Christian Boltanski was born in 1944 in Paris and died in 2021 in Paris. In the 1960s he began to develop a “personal ethnology” marked, among others, by the influence of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Harald Szeemann. At the same time, drawing on museology, Boltanski exhibited inventories of items of anonymous owners. It is often the case in Boltanski’s work that objects (photos, pieces of clothing, bells, flowers…) give voice to absent subjects and are an invitation to the viewer to meditate and contemplate.
Since his first exhibition at LeRanelagh cinema in 1968 Boltanski’s work has been shown in numerous countries. Recent solo shows have been at Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2019); Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo, Japan (2019); The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan and the National Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2019); The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2018); The Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China (2018); the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2017); Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Italy (2017); The Museum of Contemporary Art of Monterrey, Mexico (2016); Instituto Valenciano Arte Moderno (IVAM), Spain (2016); Mac’s Grand Hornu, Belgium (2015); and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile (2014).
Boltanski was recognized with several awards over his lifetime, including the Praemium Imperiale Award (2006) and the Kaiser Ring Award (2001). He participated in Documenta (1977 and 1972) and numerous Venice Biennales (2011, 1995, 1993, 1980, and 1975).
www.ftn-books.com has a large selection of Boltanski titles available
Alva (Solomon Siegfried Allweiss) (1901–1973)
Here is an artist i recently discovered. HIs work has the abstract qualities of the best artists from the Fifties and here and there you will find Comic like characters in his drawings and paintings.
Presumably because of the different environments in which Alva lived—Galicia, Berlin, Paris, the Middle East, and eventually London—he was familiar with a wide range of artistic influences and moved easily between different styles. His works include an illustrated and decorated version of the first chapter of Genesis, a series of studies of the Prophets in lithograph, and oil paintings on several subjects from Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Some of his paintings, like the one displayed here, are Symbolist. Characteristic of his style is the use of distinctive brush strokes and an aerial perspective.
Solomon Siegfried Allweiss was born in Berlin in 1901 but grew up until age 10 in Galicia, where he received a strict Jewish education. He studied music in Berlin before switching to art and adopting the pseudonym Alva in 1925. He traveled extensively in the Middle East and spent five years studying art and painting in Paris before he emigrated in 1938 to England, where he spent the remainder of his life. Alva was an occasional contributor of illustrations to Yiddish books published in London, most notably the cover for Y.A. Liski’s volume of proletarian stories, Produktivizatsie (Productivisation), published by Naroditski in 1937.
Toxique by Bernard Buffet and Sagan (1965)
In January 2017 i wrote a blog on Bernard Buffet and the different publications i had collected over the years. My personal favorit….TOXIQUE …with a text by Françoise Sagan and published by Souvenir in the english version in 1965. This is such a strong story and impressively illustrated by Buffet. Dramatic drawings for a dramatic subject of morphine addiction. Both versions are scarce. The 1964 french version even more than the 1965 english version, but whenever i find one i can not help buying it. This is a publication worth collecting and should be in the collection of any art book collector. These are scarce but i have found two copies for my inventory in the last 3 years and both are for sale , because i already have one for my personal collection.