CARLO BUGATTI. Portrait of a Lady, circa 1910-1911. Oil on canvas. Signed on edge of stretcher. 42-1/2 x 29-3/4 inches (...

Description

CARLO BUGATTI
Portrait of a Lady, circa 1910-1911
Oil on canvas
Signed on edge of stretcher
42-1/2 x 29-3/4 inches (107.9 x 75.5 cm)

LITERATURE:
M. Massé, Carlo Bugatti au Musée d'Orsay , Paris, 2001, p. 23.

Carlo Bugatti was born in Milan on February 16, 1856 to the noted architect and sculptor Giovanni Luigi Bugatti. Carlo received his formal training at the Brera Academy in Milan and at the Académie des Beaux Arts in Paris. In 1880, he opened an architectural practice in Milan and wed Teresa Lorioli. Carlo was a prolific artist and designer in every sense and thus did not restrict his energies solely to architecture. He created inspired and visionary designs for textiles, ceramics and silver, but it is for his furniture that he is most remembered and admired. By the end of the 1880s, he was exhibiting furniture designs that were heavily inspired by the Orientalist tradition and were sumptuous reinterpretations of exotic inlaid and mounted Turkish and North African forms. As his work progressed it became more influenced by the movement and sculptural nature of the high Art Novueau style culminating with his designs for the Turin Exposition in 1902. The incomparable designs are at once exotic and surreally futuristic.

The present lot is a rare and personal work, believed to depict Barbara Bolzoni, the wife of the artist's first son, Ettore Bugatti. Ettore was the famed founder of the Bugatti automobile manufactury and is widely considered to be a pioneer of modern automobile engineering and design. Carlo's other son, Rembrandt Bugatti, was an immensely gifted and sensitive sculptor whose animalier bronzes hauntingly capture the very essence of their subjects.

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