Paris, 1932

oil on canvas

76 x 96 cm

signed and dated lower right 'Bucci Paris 32'

signed, titled and dated on the back

Observing Anselmo Bucci's life and artistic career, the figure of a painter in constant movement takes shape, always on the move, curious and attentive, a multifaceted artist who traverses and moves freely between currents and trends, eluding definitions that could harness him.

Trained at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied with Bignami, Mentessi and Tallone, the young Bucci had the opportunity to meet and frequent Carlo Erba, Carlo Carrà, Romolo Romani and Leonardo Dudreville, with whom he shared studies and a lasting friendship.

After discovering international painting in the pages of Emporium, he followed up his desire to broaden his knowledge by embarking on a trip to Paris in 1906 with Dudreville and the critic Bugelli, where he would stay until 1914, taking an interest in the movement of modern life. He himself wrote to Boccioni with irony that the years he spent studying the movement earned him the title of 'pre-Futurist' (Pontiggia 1993, p.23).

In the ville lumiere he met Severini, Modigliani, Viani and, later, Picasso, Apollinaire, Dufy and Utrillo. In 1909, he produced a series of engravings entitled Paris qui buge, a collection of views from above of squares, streets, markets, marked by a dynamic and incisive sign that reveal Bucci's attention to what was to become a recurring motif in all his painting: the tranche de vie.

An interest that would lead him to produce, in these years, some of his best-known views of crowds in motion.