Born in Switzerland, Buff was trained as a lace designer at the School of Arts & Crafts in St. Gallen , Switzerland and at the age of 18 studied briefly in Munich. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1905 and since he spoke no English, moved to Wisconsin where there was a large Swiss population. There he worked as a sheep herder before moving to Los Angeles in 1906. While supporting himself as a house painter, he regularly made sketching trips into the deserts of Utah, New Mexico and Arizona and in his leisure began painting desert landscapes. He developed a lifelong friendship with Maynard Dixon who often accompanied him on these sketching trips. In 1922 he married Mary Marsh who was an artist and assistant curator at the LACMA. She gave up painting to write children’s books which her husband illustrated. A self-taught artist, he used a pointillist technique to create stark mountain and desert landscapes. Buff was a resident of Pasadena and Laguna Hills. His work won many awards in Southern California exhibitions.

Member: California Art Club

Exhibited: Los Angeles County Museum, 1923, 1929, 1937 (solos); Stendahl Galleries, 1927; Oakland Art Gallery, 1932; Golden Gate International Exposition,1939.

Works held: Metropolitan Museum; California Palace of the Legion of Honor; Los Angeles County Museum; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; British Museum; L.A. Public Library; Barlow Medical Library, Los Angeles; San Diego Museum, Detroit Institute of Art; Boston Museum.

Murals: William Penn Hotel, Whittier, CA; Guarantee Building and Loan Association of Los Angeles (done in collaboration with Maynard Dixon); Phoenix National Bank; Mormon Church, Huntington Park; Lobby, Southern California Edison Building, Los Angeles.

(Biography courtesy Hughes, Edan Milton, "Artists in California: 1786-1940," San Francisco: Hughes Publishing Company, 1989.)