“During my childhood I had the opportunity to travel around Italy along with my father, who was a painter,” says the Viareggio, Tuscany-based sculptor. “Every exhibition, a new town. From Venice to Naples the list would be too long. My parents took me to every museum, even the little ones. Also to unknown country churches with art treasures inside, where architectural masterpieces where everywhere.

“I enjoyed the different dialects and the incredible cultural variety of Italy. I encountered an infinite number of craftsmen. My childhood was permeated with art and my work has its foundations in these travels, I think that my creative practice embraces the past but operates with a personal look at contemporaneity. Also fundamental for my cultural and aesthetic education were the years spent in Florence were I studied architecture.”

Working both in clay and bronze in small and monumental sizes, Andrea has been a professional artist since 1986. He gets a lot of his inspiration from music, particularly Bach, the Baroque in general and the Romanticism of Schubert. His favorite movie is Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975).  In his own realm of sculpture, the artist admires the masters of Renaissance like Donatello, Benvenuto Cellini, Giambologna, Luca della Robbia, Desiderio da Settignano. As for the painters, it’s Leonardo and Botticelli.

On his process, the artist writes: “I don’t have a specific theme or project that I explore in my work. I rarely start a new piece with a precise idea, instead I like to put myself face to face with a piece of clay and start a sort of conversation/fight. The result is pretty often unpredictable. It is not the subject itself that matters but the achievement of a particular state of mind during the act of creation.

“There are several stages of the work. The most important phase is the initial moulding in which the lines, curves and the movement are crystallised in clay. From that moment on, it is just a matter of purifying the idea from the excess of the matter. The light also plays a very important role in the process, as it gives me the coordinates to use my tools and shows me what to remove.”

Andrea Bucci actively participates in the Italian artistic life. He maintains his own gallery in Lucca, Tuscany. His first foreign exhibition was held in 2000 in Montreal, Canada, with the sponsorship of the Institute of Italian Culture. Since then, his works have travelled all over the world.

Links: Website (www.bucci-art.com) | Saatchi Art (www.saatchiart.com/Bucci) | Facebook (www.facebook.com/bucciartgallery)