BERNARD BUFFET was born on July 10, 1928, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Son of Charles Buffet, director of the GuenneNote mirrorware company, and his wife Blanche, née Colombe, he came from a cultivated, petty-bourgeois background, going against the legend that he lived in extreme poverty. Both his grandfathers were military men. One of them had a passion for drawing. He was raised with his brother Claude, five years his senior, in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, where he began painting and drawing at the age of ten.
In July, he exhibits La Ravaudeuse de filet at the Salon d'Automne, where he meets André Minaux. With Minaux, Jean Couty and Simone Dat, he joins Bernard Lorjou, Yvonne Mottet, Gaston Sébire, Paul Rebeyrolle and Michel Thompson in the L'homme témoin group. In 1949 Pierre Descargues publishes Bernard Buffet with Presses littéraires de France. Bernard Buffet marries Agnès Nanquette (1923-1976), a Beaux-Arts classmate, from whom he divorces the following year.
An art lover provides him with a bungalow in Garches. As rent, Bernard Buffet gives her one painting a quarter.
Bernard Buffet meets Pierre Bergé in 1950, "in a café on the rue de la Seine, now defunct, Chez Constant" Pierre Bergé becomes his companion, managing his career until they break up in 1958.
In 1952, the City of Paris awarded him the Antral prize, endowed with one hundred thousand francs. He went to the Place des Vosges, where M. Darfeuille introduced him to drawing