Rembrandt Bugatti

Biography of Rembrandt Bugatti ( 1884-1916 )

Son of the architect, designer and furniture maker Carlo Bugatti, Rembrandt Annibale Bugatti was born in Milano on the 16^th October 1884. His younger brother is going to become the famous car maker Ettore Bugatti. Rembrandt Bugatti was a precocious child, and like his mother neglected him, his uncle the painter Giovanni Segantini – nicknamed the Van Gogh of the Alps – gave him protection and noted very early his talents for sculpture.

Indeed, Rembrandt Bugatti made his first sculptures at the age of fifteen. Passionate by modelling, he showed immediately some very good qualities of observation and a wonderful intuition, pointed out by Mrs Veronique Fromanger : “Bugatti did not choose direct cut like his father, but modelling at free hand, without any point of reference or measurement, like an acrobat without any net (the most primitive way and the strongest one to describe nature and living things in three dimensions), and the speed in the execution to show his genius in the material.” To express living things by modelling is an exercise that demands more method than by casting that fixes living in place instantly.

Rembrandt Bugatti followed his parents when they left Italy for Paris in 1904. The Bugatti family settled near the Jardin des Plantes. The proximity of this place, that claimed to be “ a summary of Creation”  was a wonderful inspiration for Bugatti. He could see there for the first time the great wild animals, like panthers, elephants, pelicans, camels and even wildebeest.

The strength of Bugatti’s art works resides in the absence of a detailed study of animals anatomy. He instinctively reached to catch perfectly the attitude of wild animals, as well as their morphology than their personality. At the age of nineteen, he has been noticed by the dealer and art founder Adrien-Aurélien Hébrard, with whom he signed an exclusivity contract. The head manager of the studio Albino Palazzolo from Milano, became his regular caster and founder. Rembrandt Bugatti exhibited for the first time within the Gallery Hébrard in 1904. There his career has been launched and the press praised the quality of his work. In 1907, Bugatti was invited to settled in Antwerp by the Royal Society of Zoology. The  zoo of Antwerp, considered to be the most important one at the turn of the century in Europe, became his preferred place. 

Dated 1907, our sculpture has been executed from the wildebeest of the zoo of Antwerp. Bugatti has perfectly known how to reproduce the morphology of this animal in the instant of his posture. The model has been exhibited numerous time, especially at the 1908’s Autumn Salon and also within the Gallery Hébrard during the “Exhibition of Contemporary Art”. At the age of twenty-six, Bugatti was decorated with the Legion of Honor. Until 1914, he had flurry of activity, modelling the entire wildlife with unequalled talent. But the WWI hit him with full force. Shaken by the death of the animals of the zoo in Antwerp and affected by tuberculosis, he joined Paris after having discharged from Italian army. He decided to kill himself in his studio in 1916.