Carlo Bugatti (1856-1940)
Carlo Bugatti posant devant une armoire gainée de peau de chameau, entre 1856 et 1940
Musée d'Orsay
© DR
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Carlo Bugatti's world is that of everyday life – our surroundings, the objects we use – which the artist then embellishes. The "real" world then becomes an adventure: a chair turns into a sculpture and a tea set into a dream machine.
Fauteuil curule, 1890-1896
Paris, collection Alain Lesieutre
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / DR
Here is the artist posing around 1890-1900 in front of a huge wardrobe covered with parchment and camel skin, decorated with stamped copper discs that make his creations immediately recognisable. The artist's pose and his self-conscious elegance reveal his panache and originality immediately. Born in Milan in 1856, he died in Molsheim in Alsace in 1940. He was so famous in his lifetime that he dared to answer the Queen of Italy, who had come to congratulate him for his furniture in the "Mauresque" style at the Turin exhibition in 1902 : "You are mistaken, majesty, this style is mine !". He had three children, including two sons whose fame surpassed his own: Rembrandt Bugatti, the animal sculptor and Ettore Bugatti, the automobile constructor.
Chaise à haut dossier asymétrique, 1895
Paris, collection particulière
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / DR
The exhibition covers the artistic and industrial career of Carlo Bugatti, decorator and architect, furniture designer and maker, creator of jewellery models, inventor of instruments as well as of a racing bicycle, etc., from his beginnings in Milan around 1880, his first successes outside Italy in 1888, his triumph in 1902 at the famous Turin exhibition and his arrival in Paris in 1904, to his retirement in Pierrefonds in 1910.
It endeavours to show both the diversity of his production and his search for an always purer form.
Salon "escargot" de Carlo Bugatti, après 1902
Musée d'Orsay
Don Jean-Marie Desbordes, 1981
© RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d'Orsay) / DR / DR
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The queen of Italy was not far off the mark: Carlo Bugatti's "industrial" production fed on an exotic interest in the East and Far East, and was certainly inspired by Japan. It was a great success: reviews of the time spread the different models of furniture, as well as photographs of interior decorations that have since vanished.
Carlo Bugatti's formal research on the circle and curbed shapes found their apex at the Turin International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art in 1902 where his Snail-room, built in a spiral around a bar representing the animal's head, caused a sensation. The four chairs and the table devised to occupy the centre of the room are pure pieces of sculpture in which the strength of the shape answers the delicacy of the ornament. The international jury awarded the highest prize to the artist who was proclaimed "the first in Italy to realise rather than dream modern furniture".
Vase à têtes d'éléphant, 1907-1910
Paris, collection Alain Lesieutre
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / DR
In 1904, Carlo Bugatti sold his furniture manufactury and settled in Paris with his family. He opened a more craftsman like, less industrial, workshop and soon, besides furniture, he began to design jewellery models in which his fantasy mingled monsters and flowers.
After his retirement to Pierrefonds in 1910, Carlo Bugatti dedicated himself to painting, but also continued his research on the subject of the ideal shape, an ovoid that his son Ettore took over in his turn for the famous pear-shaped radiator grill of Bugatti cars.
Deux pieds de lampe, vers 1910
Paris, collection Alain Lesieutre
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / DR
The exhibition also provides the occasion to publish the Fonds d'archives Carlo Bugatti, kept in the Musée d'Orsay collections, including a hundred and forty one documents, mainly photographic images of furniture and models of pieces furniture, buildings and interior decoration. The book will include the hundred or so plasters, original casts and moulds for jewellery or furniture, the sixty-seven drawings and the three pieces of furniture by Carlo Bugatti that also belong to the Musée d'Orsay collections.