DOI Heft:
No. 159 (June, 1906)
DOI Artikel:Horteloup, Marcel: An italian sculptor: Rembrandt Bugatti
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20715#0046
Rembrandt Bugatti
LIONESSES ”
BY REMBRANDT BUGATTI
§r6at manual skill revealed in all Bugatti’s works.
The explanation of this fact is that from his earliest
years he has devoted himself ardently to numerous
little pieces of handiwork, principally in the
direction of delicate carpentry, which were calcu-
lated to bring him into touch with all the difficulties
of practical execution, and to prepare him to over-
come them. Even before exhibiting as a sculptor
at fourteen years of age, in Milan, his native town,
and then in Turin and Venice, he had worked as a
Painter-decorator of furniture and glass in the
workshops of his father, who was the author of
many highly interesting creations in decorative art
applied to furniture. Bugatti’s artistic education
was indeed confined to these efforts of applied art;
he received no specialised lessons from any master
whatever, nor attended classes at any art school or
academy. He was the child of his own works,
brought up in the atmosphere of a highly artistic
circle, and with naught in the way of counsel save
that of a family which boasted among its truest
intimates friends of such talent as the sculptor
Troubetzkoy, to whose influence the boy did not
remain a complete stranger. Bugatti will tell you,
further, without boastfulness or vanity, simply
stating the fact, that he knows nothing of animal
anatomy, and relies solely on his eye to remain
faithful to the truth. His fingers and a few centi-
metres of iron wire twisted into racket-shape are
his only working tools, as anyone may see by
watching the artist at work with his models in the
Jardin des Plantes, whither he goes every morning,
taking with him his supply of “ plastidine.”
Bugatti has become a fervent adept at the mar-
vellous process of cire-perdue, the only process
which can transcribe into bronze with implicit
“zebus ”
BY REMBRANDT BUGATTI
25
LIONESSES ”
BY REMBRANDT BUGATTI
§r6at manual skill revealed in all Bugatti’s works.
The explanation of this fact is that from his earliest
years he has devoted himself ardently to numerous
little pieces of handiwork, principally in the
direction of delicate carpentry, which were calcu-
lated to bring him into touch with all the difficulties
of practical execution, and to prepare him to over-
come them. Even before exhibiting as a sculptor
at fourteen years of age, in Milan, his native town,
and then in Turin and Venice, he had worked as a
Painter-decorator of furniture and glass in the
workshops of his father, who was the author of
many highly interesting creations in decorative art
applied to furniture. Bugatti’s artistic education
was indeed confined to these efforts of applied art;
he received no specialised lessons from any master
whatever, nor attended classes at any art school or
academy. He was the child of his own works,
brought up in the atmosphere of a highly artistic
circle, and with naught in the way of counsel save
that of a family which boasted among its truest
intimates friends of such talent as the sculptor
Troubetzkoy, to whose influence the boy did not
remain a complete stranger. Bugatti will tell you,
further, without boastfulness or vanity, simply
stating the fact, that he knows nothing of animal
anatomy, and relies solely on his eye to remain
faithful to the truth. His fingers and a few centi-
metres of iron wire twisted into racket-shape are
his only working tools, as anyone may see by
watching the artist at work with his models in the
Jardin des Plantes, whither he goes every morning,
taking with him his supply of “ plastidine.”
Bugatti has become a fervent adept at the mar-
vellous process of cire-perdue, the only process
which can transcribe into bronze with implicit
“zebus ”
BY REMBRANDT BUGATTI
25