Rembrandt Bugatti

This work is recorded in the archives of the Rembrandt Bugatti Conservatoire and is offered together with a certificate of authenticity.

Balancing on three legs while shifting forward, the regal mammals in Éléphant D'Asie "Il y Arrivera" (lot 37) and Éléphant Blanc Mendiant (lot 36) reach out with their trunks extended, imbuing both a sense of playfulness and comfort. Conveying a weighted emotion, Éléphant au Repos (lot 38) stands peacefully with motionless feet, tail hanging at rest and a trunk with only the slightest anticipatory curl. The effects are powerful - the observer can almost anticipate the slow and steady movements of the subjects. What can not be seen is the emotional relationship that existed between the elephant and its sculptor. The three Bugatti sculptures from the Perelman Collection represent the most important and revered sculptures of Rembrandt Bugatti’s prolific oeuvre and are the finest of the artist’s immortalizing representations of animals. Bugatti forged an idiosyncratic career through his unique personal perspective alongside his development of innovative methodologies, and was thus an outlier among modernist sculptors.

Born in Milan in 1884 to an artistic family, Rembrandt Bugatti had direct influences from his father Carlo Bugatti, a furniture designer and metalworker of the Art Nouveau, and his uncle Giovanni Segantini, a leader of the Lombard Divisionists, an Italian order of neo-impressionism. His elder brother, Ettore, applied his creative fervor to engineering and established the Bugatti car company. Showing great artistic talent at a young age Rembrandt was encouraged to pursue a life in the visual arts, excelling exceptionally at sculpting. In 1903, at just 19 years old, Bugatti was selected to exhibit at the Venice Biennale. In 1904, the family relocated to Paris where Bugatti would discover the Jardin des Plantes, one of the greatest zoological centers in Europe. Inspired by the great variety of exotic animals at the wildlife sanctuary, Bugatti developed a passion for animals, spending hours observing and familiarizing himself with the emotions and personalities of his subjects. Here, he sculpted his first hippopotami, kangaroos, camels, and elephants out of clay or a non-drying plasticine made from clay, dust and wax. In 1907 Bugatti moved to Antwerp, where he transferred his methodologies to the Belgian national zoo. Bugatti would spend up to a week observing and sometimes interacting with an animal before sculpting them, preferring to then complete the work in one sitting in order to capture the essence of that particular moment. Often sculpting groups and pairings of animals that were unrelated in the natural world, he would focus on their interactions by observing their subtle gestures and nuances of musculature and movement.

Around 1900 sculptors were moving towards abstraction and cubism, animalier artists studied anatomy and skeletal models to sculpt idealized figures. Meanwhile Bugatti preferred to spend his time at the zoo where he would study his subjects' souls. Working with Parisian gallerist and foundry owner Adrien-Aurélien Hébrard, Bugatti produced enough work to exhibit annually from 1904 to 1913. In 1911, he received the prestigious Legion of Honor medal from the French Government, and exhibited at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. Having modest success during his lifetime, it is retrospectively that Bugatti’s unique approach to creating stunningly emotional sculptures is celebrated for its innovation. The three Bugatti masterworks in the Perelman Collection come from the apex of the artist's career and each embodies what makes his work so alluring.