Certificate of authenticity issued by the Maurice Garnier Gallery on February 1st 2000.

Throughout his career, Bernard Buffet has taken human myths as his subjects, revealing an unvarnished truth. His radical view of the world is reflected in a powerful graphic style with immediately recognizable black lines.
Bernard Buffet often used the animal figure in his paintings to personify a feeling, a state of mind or a human behavior. Far from the naturalism of Albrecht Dürer, the artist, by means of assertive brushstrokes, inscribed these animals in an expressionist vein and made a point of accentuating the characteristics of each species.
"Mes Singes" was the last exhibition of the artist during his lifetime. Presented in 1999 at the Maurice Garnier Gallery, this series through which chimpanzees, gorillas, gibbons and other monkeys are revealed, revives Bernard Buffet's taste for animal painting. Represented from the front or from three quarters, these animals display a palette of expressions mixing melancholy, sadness and despair reminiscent of the clown series so characteristic of Buffet's work. These simian expressions reflect the human soul and its torments.
By staring at the viewer, these monkeys incite the spectators to question themselves. "The body of the scandalously humanized monkey becomes the pitiful mirror of our miseries and our basenesses and does not finish vexing us" writes Bertrand Marret (Singeries dans la peinture). Although imbued with great melancholy, Buffet's painting was immediately adored by the public. In December 1946, after having participated in three exhibitions that same year, the State acquired one of his works for the Musée National d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris. Two years later, the collector Maurice Girardin bought seventeen paintings, making him his most ardent admirer and supporter. In April 1948, although his selected painting did not win a prize at the Prix de la Jeune Peinture organized by the Drouant-David gallery, it attracted the great art dealer Emmanuel David who went to his home a few days later to offer him an exclusive contract. This contract will be shared, in 1957, with the one who will become his gallery owner and advisor: Maurice Garnier. An artist of precocious and dazzling success, it is thanks to this mentor, who made the disconcerting choice of presenting only one artist ad vitam aeternam, that the painter had an international resonance.
It was on a stormy morning that the fate of this work was sealed. Indeed, a lightning strike of an unexpected force made our collector waver from his iron steed, which found itself on the ground in front of the Maurice Garnier gallery. The synchronicity between our collector's fall and the artist's call to God having been made known, Maurice Garnier invited him into his gallery to choose the work of his choice, which was none other than this Gorilla. More alive than natural, this monkey, with its penetrating gaze, embodies the artistic idiom of the painter whose economy of means, the pallor of the tones and the black rings always provoke in us a vibrant emotion.