October 9th 2013 to January 29th 2014, Sladmore Gallery, London

The Sladmore Gallery is delighted to curate this loan exhibition, gathering the animal pairings and groupings sculpted by Rembrandt Bugatti. All seventeen sculptures featured depict pairs or family groups of animals and have been generously loaned by collectors both in the UK and abroad. Works have been chosen to illustrate the sculptor’s unique ability to capture the attitudes and emotion of his subjects and demonstrate the unusual empathy he had for all creatures. Bugatti conveyed a true sense of tenderness between beasts, both amongst the same species, like the antelopes in ‘La Mère Blessée’ or peculiar mismatches like the unique ‘Lion Cub and Greyhound’, telling of the affection developed between the Greyhound adoptive mother of Atlas, an orphaned lion cub.

These groups were also a part of his Bugatti’s sculptural method in a kind of conversation of form and shape. Repeated elements interspersed with individual variation are not only a means employed by composers and musicians to create familiarity of tune and rhythm, but also a sculptural device in through which Bugatti could exploit the small differences that emphasised the personal characteristics of the individual animals and birds he was portraying whilst at the same time celebrating them for their own sake.

Exhibition catalogue available here.