Borgo Museo | Sculture 1976 – 2004

Biography

Guido Bucci was born in Viareggio in 1926; he graduated from the Higher Institute of Art and began teaching painting disciplines in the “Free School of Painting and Sculpture”, a school he founded and which he has always directed. In addition to the discipline of teacher Bucci is remembered, both for the numerous personal exhibitions exhibited in the Versilia area but also for the importance it had at the social level in Italy at the time, having been an important national and international demonstrator. He is an artist with a career full of important awards that began in 1951 when, as soon as he was twenty-six, he was identified and followed in his activity by a diligent and talented publicist, Marucci, who wrote an article for him, in the major Tuscan newspaper, entitled “Our young painters: Guido Bucci”. A few months later, Bucci presents 26 works to a personal exhibition at the “Fratini” Gallery in Viareggio, presented by Elpidio Jenco. Guido dies on November 21, 2017.

Philosophy

Bucci artist was born around the second half of the twentieth century as sculptures, even if he tends to prefer color, because it is richer, usable and immediate. His paintings are characterised by an almost monochromatic use of color: a yellow which becomes ocher, which darkens in the burnt, which softens into orange, which fades into a golden light and, just touched here and there, by a faint blue or an uncertain green, impregnates all the canvases. And it is thanks to his use of colours that Guido is able to reproduce a delicate message of melancholy. In his productions there is no shortage of small sculptures mostly of female nudes and ceramic pieces. Bucci’s activity has unfolded throughout these decades in the name of a clear coherence and continuity of style and intent. Essentially two seem to be the focal points around which his work develops: the seascapes and the nudes of women, flanked by still lifes, immediately recognisable as the fruit of the same hand. His figures have the poetics of simplicity, where certain accentuations and deformations end up appearing normal to us, as if reality were the one represented by the sculptor and not vice versa.

Artwork in Castagno

The work in Castagno by Guido Bucci is Nudo al sole (Nude in the sun, whose head has unfortunately been lost), one of his many female sculptures. This small figure of a woman, who looks out from a niche in the wall, is sitting naked in a spontaneous pose. Her arms are resting loosely on her legs; a human realism emerges from non-idealised forms. Yet the women of Bucci are real Venus originating from the white foam of the sea and cruelly thrown by the waves on the earthly world; here they too have acquired defects, imperfections, in short, they have become deeply human. These are the artist’s favorite subjects.