“[…] The group of seven (Sironi, Funi, Marussig, Malerba, Oppi, and Dudreville) asked me for a name, a title we could boast of and wave as a flag. I thought about it. And I brought two names, a few days later: Candelabro and Novecento Italiano. Candelabro was immediately put aside because it seemed, with its seven arms, too “synagogue style”. And regarding Novecento Italiano - a word that must have had worldwide success - we reflected, meditated, hesitated. It was accepted but without the unanimous enthusiasm that I would have expected.
[…] Then, twenty years ago, the glorious centuries of Italian art stopped in the eighteenth century. It was commonly said Quattrocento, Cinquecento, but it did not go beyond the eighteenth century. Now, why not proceed with a twentieth century (editor’s note: Novecento Italiano)? A century of Art to define a group of painters was a stunt, I agree; it was a joke, but witty.
There was Novecento Italiano. There was Bontempelli's twentieth century: the architectural, decorative, industrial twentieth century; the twentieth century of confetti and shoe polish. But the original one was mine: it was ours of “the seven”, in September - October 1922. What’s most curious is that twentieth century, welcomed at first by mocking smiles, became the denomination of a whole century; and also, nineteenth century became the name of the previous century, known ‘til that moment with the vague name “neoclassical”, “realist”, “impressionist” and “modern art”.
With my regards, hugs to you.
Your Bucci."
A.Bucci, Letter to Ugo Nebbia about Novecento Italiano,
from U. Nebbia, The painting of the twentieth century, 1941.
Polyhedral, tormented, unique: Anselmo Bucci can be defined as an all-round artist, an Art lover. From journalism to architecture, from furniture to painting; a man who escapes definitions, a charismatic character with "countless lives".
His personality allowed him to create the Novecento Italiano art movement to celebrate Italian Art, inspired by a return to classicism and the purity of forms to be revisited in a modern key. A movement baptized by Bucci, defined since then for this father of the twentieth century.
The twentieth century group, born after the first contacts with the circle of the intellectual and art critic Margherita Sarfatti, saw the light in 1922 and had among its protagonists Mario Sironi, Achille Funi, Leonardo Dudreville, Emilio Malerba, Pietro Marussig, Ubaldo Oppi and Bucci himself. Its founder, however, moved away from it in the thirties because for him Art is a path that does not end and continuous discovery.
CARPE DIEM: ART IS MOVEMENT
From the observation of Parisian crowds to the perspectives of new worlds, from the decisive features of the engravings to the strong images that evoke the First World War. Anselmo Bucci's artistic career is characterized by a relentless evolution, he is symbolist, post-impressionist, passionate about the world of the avant-garde, he tries to seize the moment, to graze with current fingers and different contexts making them his own.
If we think of the impressionist brushstrokes evident in Juliette's Bathroom and again of the painting of Judith and Holofernes, a biblical theme reinterpreted in a modern and ironic key, it is immediately clear how much Bucci's is an exciting journey, driven by the desire for continuous inspiration. Varied in themes, in styles, his is a search for "the true halo of poetry".
Bucci "signs" a century, leaving in the twentieth century a unique and very personal mark, but always new and in constant evolution: "I have never tried to lie in a style, but to tell the truth in a common language".
NOTES
Letter from U. Nebbia, The painting of the twentieth century, 1941
Anselmo Bucci. Drawings, sketches and notes. Personal albums - Volume one, edited by Guido Cribiori, Studiolo, 2018
Anselmo Bucci. Guaches, drawings, notes and comments. Personal albums - Second volume. Venice 1932, edited by Guido Cribiori, Studiolo, 2019
The monographic volume “I am Anselmo Bucci” edited by G. Cribiori and published by Studiolo Fine Art is in progress