Bernard Buffet was the first artist of the television and the jet age. As the first of the so-called Fabulous Five (Francoise Sagan, Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot and Yves Saint Laurent) he was a leader of the cultural revolution that seemed to forge a new France from the shattered remains of a discredited and demoralized country. While still in his twenties he had a Rolls Royce, a chateau, an island, high society at his feet and a glittering future ahead. Yet his extraordinary fall from grace was engineered by the very establishment that created him. Once hailed as a genius he was later shunned as a joke. Today, almost 70 years after he first shot to fame as a 20 year old prodigy hailed as a successor to Picasso, critical opinion remains sharply divided on the reputation of a controversial painter.

Rich in incident Buffet’s remarkable story is played out against the backdrop of the beau monde of the 1950s and 1960s in locations as diverse as St Tropez, Tokyo, Paris, Dallas, St Petersburg and New York, before coming to its miserable conclusion alone in his studio.

Preface, 2016.
ISBN: 9781848094444. 483 pp.
Hardcover. Near fine in a near fine jacket.