A Multigenerational Story of Modern Creativity and Innovation
The exhibition will explore the rich artistic and technological legacies of the peripatetic Bugatti family, beginning with patriarch Carlo Bugatti (1856-1940). His fin-de-siècle furniture designs, which debuted at international expositions in London, Paris, Milan, and Turin, are noteworthy for their fanciful combination of materials: ebonized wood inlaid with copper, brass, ivory, mother-of-pearl, and vellum, which he often decorated with leather tassels, geometric marquetry, and painted designs. Sons Ettore (1881-1947) and Rembrandt (1884-1916) inherited their father’s artistic passion but pursued different paths.
Rembrandt had a tragically brief career as a sculptor, producing deeply empathetic and impressionistic portraits of animals. Ettore, meanwhile, became a celebrated automobile designer and manufacturer. According to automotive scholar and guest curator Ken Gross, Bugatti’s technical advances were inextricably linked to—even indistinguishable from—their formal beauty: “Everything about Bugatti was artistic: the cars, their advertising, and the enduring joie de vivre associated with the marque.” The cars that he and his elder son, Jean (1909-1939), designed, came to epitomize the speed and dynamism of modernity.
Visitors to the exhibition will be able to immerse themselves in the Bugatti family story as they view the furniture, cars, sculptures, photographs, advertisements, and other ephemera. These pieces and the stories behind them will provide a deeper understanding of the family’s creative passions, their pursuit of perfection, and their place within the history of cultural modernity. “Although Ettore Bugatti famously declared, ‘Perfection is never reached,’ he obsessively pursued it throughout his career,” said senior curator Lee Glazer. | 
