Anselmo Bucci (1887-1955) - Montmartre, Mother Catherine, Place Du Tertre, 1912

Anselmo Bucci (1887-1955)
Montmartre, Mother Catherine, Place Du Tertre, 1912
Oil on canvas
65 x 49 cm
71 x 56 cm with frame
Dated lower left. Signed and dedicated lower right “To Marie Cordialement A Bucci”

Born in Fossombrone, in the province of Pesaro, on May 25, 1887, Anselmo Bucci is an Italian painter and engraver, also author of some important literary texts. He was one of the protagonists of the emerging artistic avant-gardes of the first part of the 20th century, both in Italy and in France.

His passion for drawing was revealed very early. The famous painter Francesco Salvini took him under his wing at a very young age, before the young Anselmo joined the Brera Fine Arts in Milan in 1905. However, abhorring pictorial rhetoric, he decided the following year, at the age of 19, to settle in Paris, at the time the capital of the artistic avant-garde.

In the French capital, Anselmo Bucci lives an existence that is difficult from a material point of view, but very stimulating from an artistic level. In particular, he met Gino Severini, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani and many others. He gradually became known for his engravings, an art in which he became a true master, attracting the attention of critics such as Apollinaire and André Salmon. His most famous engravings are those of futurist inspiration, although always very linked to a post-impressionist figuration close to Italian classicism.

During the years 1912 and 1913, faithful to the tradition of French painters, Bucci decided to travel to Europe and the Mediterranean, where he would study new colors and luminosities.

In 1914, when the First World War broke out, Anselmo Bucci volunteered to join the "Bicycle Battalion" in Lombardy, where he joined other Futurist artists and poets such as Marinetti, Boccioni, Sant'Elia and Carlo Erba. The same year, at the Mostra dell'Incisione in Florence, he won the silver medal. The war inspired him, and he would become one of the most prolific "war painters". The images that he published in Paris in 1917 concern moments of the conflict and are entitled "Sketches of the Italian Front". Two years later, he distinguished himself with a series of twelve lithographs entitled "Finis Austriae", always focused on war situations.

When the Great War came to an end, Bucci returned regularly for long periods to Paris, attracted by the creative fervor that abounded in the French capital. He now devotes himself fully to painting, exhibiting in numerous Italian and French galleries, but his name and his works also begin to circulate outside France: in England, Holland and Belgium in particular.

In 1920, he was invited to the Venice Biennale. It was around this date that a change of style took place in Anselmo Bucci, which brought him back to a classical turn. He then approached the circle of intellectuals and artists led by the writer Margherita Sarfatti and in 1922, with Sironi, Funi, Dudreville (whom he had already known at the time of Brera), as well as with Malerba, Marussig, Oppi, he gives life to the so-called “20th century” group, Novecento. Indeed, it is he who baptizes it with this name. The programmatic intention is to return to the figure, to the recognizability of the subject, by detaching itself from the extremisms of the emerging avant-garde, increasingly distant from the classicism.

In 1920, thanks to his work accomplished during this period, he was invited to the Venice Biennale. In 1926, he participated in the first exhibition of the “Novecento Italiano” group but gradually began to distance himself from the movement, and to launching ever more into literary adventure, thereby confirming his artistic eclecticism.

The outbreak of the Second World War was the opportunity for Bucci, as for the First, to put himself back into play from an artistic point of view. He thus recycled himself, during the conflict, as a figurative interpreter of the facts of war, in notably producing engravings representing the Navy and military aviation.

His home in Milan, which also housed his workshop, was destroyed in 1943. He therefore returned to Monza to the family home. He spent the last ten years of his life in total isolation. In 1949, he obtained the last recognition for his artistic work: the Angelicum Prize, which rewards works of sacred art.

Anselmo Bucci died in Monza on November 19, 1955 at the age of 68.

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