Original lithographic poster published by Atelier Mourlot, 1986.

This poster was produced for Bernard Buffet’s 1986 exhibition Les Pays‑Bas at Galerie Maurice Garnier, Paris, reflecting the artist’s sustained interest in the visual character of Northern European landscapes.

The composition centres on a single windmill set within the flat, open terrain of the Low Countries, its sails extended against a spare sky and broad horizon. Buffet’s familiar crisp black outline and minimal tonal shifts articulate the structural form of the windmill and the surrounding fields with a solemn, almost metaphysical stillness. By reducing the landscape to its essential geometry, Buffet transforms a regional subject into a statement of structural rhythm and existential presence.

This lithograph exemplifies Buffet’s post‑war graphic language: unadorned line, restrained colour, and an economy of means that emphasises psychological space over pictorial detail. The windmill, an iconic symbol of the Netherlands, becomes both a literal geographic marker and a poetic signifier of place, memory, and formal reduction.