Montagne Sainte-Victoire 1958

Bernard Buffet’s painting, Montagne Sainte-Victoire, captures a landscape reduced to its bare bones. The bold strokes and stark contrasts suggest a scene captured in a moment, yet there’s a timeless quality to it. The paint is applied with an almost brutal directness, and the texture is rough. Look at how the black lines are dragged across the canvas to create the trees and branches, each stroke a deliberate act. The mountain itself is rendered with white and grey, punctuated by vertical lines that suggest both solidity and fragility. It’s as if Buffet is not just painting a mountain, but also the idea of a mountain, its essence. This reduction to essentials reminds me of other artists who sought to capture the underlying structure of the world. Buffet's work embraces this ambiguity, inviting us to see beyond the surface and contemplate the deeper, more elusive aspects of reality.