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Article Excerpt
In 1958, during the height of the cold war, San Francisco's quixotic sculptor and modernist, Beniamino "Benny" Bufano, visited the Soviet Union as part of a delegation of artists. (1) He carried with him a four-foot-tall model of a statue that he envisioned creating and dedicating to world peace. (2) Upon his arrival in Moscow, Bufano's hosts asked him what he would like to do while there. He replied that he would like to talk to Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin. A week later, to the surprise of the other members of Bufano's party, Bulganin telephoned Bufano. During their conversation, Bufano requested Bulganin's permission to construct a 400-foot-tall version of the peace statue in the Soviet Union. Bulganin politely denied Bufano's request, noting that if need be there were plenty of Soviet artists who were capable of creating such a work.
Years earlier, Bufano had constructed a 34-foot-tall peace statue for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. As he worked on his sculpture, the real world boiled with the violence of the times--the bombing of innocent civilians in Guernica by Spain's fascists, Hitler's antisemitic policies in preparation for the "Final solution," Stalin's bloody purges, Japan's infamous rape of Nanking (3)--making it a difficult time for idealists dedicated to world peace. Bufano's peace statue was the artist's response to a world on the verge of catastrophe, and it was a call to action. Bufano revealed his purpose when he described the sculpture as a "projectile" for enforcing peace:
I sculptured "Peace" in the form of a projectile, to express the idea that if peace is to be preserved today it must be enforced peace---enforced by the democracies against Fascist barbarism. Modern warfare, which involves the bombing of women and children, has no counterpart in a peace interpreted by the conventional motif of olive branches and doves. (4)
After Bulganin rejected Bufano's offer to sculpt an immense peace statue in the Soviet Union, the artist asked for permission to construct a smaller version of the sculpture at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on the Soviet Union's behalf. Again Bulganin refused. He told Bufano to contact President Dwight Eisenhower if he truly desired to bring about peace. When Bufano returned home to California, he wrote to Eisenhower, only to receive a form letter shortly after informing him that the president of the United States did not respond to the intermediaries of foreign leaders. (5) Thus, the sky-scraping peace sculpture envisioned by the diminutive artist was never constructed in Russia or New York City. Instead, Bufano erected a somewhat smaller version of it four years later at Timber Cove, ninety miles north of San Francisco.
The Timber Cove peace statue, which Bufano named The Expanding Universe, was begun in September 1962, just weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis. (6) The 93-foot-tall concrete, lead, and mosaic sculpture is adorned with elements of the Madonna, Universal Child and a large, open hand--themes of peace that Bufano previously had employed.
From Bufano's perspective, The Expanding Universe is undoubtedly a symbolic "projectile," recalling the cold war's intercontinental ballistic missiles that in 1962 threatened life on earth. But whereas the Soviet and American missiles were agents of global destruction, Bufano's missile stands for peace, its hand, poised high atop the sculpture, as capable as any missile's warhead of delivering its message. Perhaps as the leaders of the East and West contemplated unleashing their missiles of death upon the earth, Bufano dreamed of creating a visual reminder of the consequences of not choosing peace:
"Maybe if the world gets frightened enough, we'll have peace." Benny Bufano, the five-foot dynamo, sighed a deep-down sigh. Then he said, as an afterthought: "Man is a stupid beast. He seldom learns unless he is shocked into thinking. The greatest good to thinking has been the invention of atomic fission. It is terrible in its worst aspects, but God has seen fit for it to happen so that mankind can be saved. The great force of atomic fission has blown man out of his convenient nationalism into international thinking. If it is fear that must awaken man to brotherhood and humanity ... then let's scare the hell out of him!" (7)
From an early age, Bufano believed in peace, but he was not the typical "peacenik." He was eclectic, suspicious, egotistical, occasionally hostile, and often given to exaggeration if not outright lies. People either loved him of they hated him. Herb Caen, San Francisco's beloved newspaper columnist, was quite fond of Bufano and regularly featured him in his daily columns, an exposure that helped elevate the artist to celebrity status.
While it is no secret that Bufano was seriously flawed as a family man, his celebrity assured him an almost saintly stature in the Bay Area. (8) He had few friends and only rarely did he associate with other artists. But he was well known and beloved by many people, including the writer Henry Miller, who once predicted, "He will out-live our civilization and probably be better known, better understood, both as a man and artist, five thousand years hence." (9) This was probably wishful thinking on Miller's part; contemporary art critics have all but dismissed the relevance and importance of Bufano's art, relegating him, perhaps, to a cultural phenomenon rather than influential artist. Yet, Bufano's sculptures still survive and, given their hard material constituents and public ownership, will for years to come. In the creation of these peace missiles--monumental sentinels that remind us of Bufano's challenge to remain vigilant in our defense of democracy, to cherish world peace, and to honor and protect the planet's children--Bufano captured the promise of peace and, in doing so, embraced the future at a time when many others feared it.
A LIFE OF ARTISTIC PASSION
Beniamino Benvenuto Bufano was born in San Fele, Italy, perhaps on October 14, 1898, (10) the date most often referenced in published sources. Throughout his life, he devised his own truths to serve his immediate purpose, and as he grew older his birthdate progressed in time with him. According to his wife, Virginia Lewin, Bufano was born in 1886, but his parents differed as to whether he had been born in March or October. (11) His death certificate lists his age as seventy-nine and his birthdate as October 15, 1890. (12)
Bufano was the youngest of fifteen children. (13) When he was three his family moved to New York City, where he spent the remainder of his childhood. Educated by private tutors, he later attended the Art Students League (1913-15), where he studied with the famous sculptors Herbert Adams, Paul Manship, and James Fraser. Having traveled to San Francisco in 1915 to work for Manship on the Panama Pacific International Exposition, he produced the medallions that decorated the Court of the Universe's main arch. (14) One medallion depicted "art guiding the child to nature for inspiration," (15) suggesting, perhaps, a theme Bufano later explored. Unable to afford his own studio, Bufano worked in the San Francisco workshop of the noted craftsman Dirk Van Erp. (16) Following the exposition, he returned home to New York and set up shop in his own Greenwich Village studio.
Shortly after President Woodrow Wilson declared war on Germany in 1917 Bufano accidentally severed his right index finger while cutting wood. (17) He seized upon the idea of mailing his severed "trigger finger" to President Wilson as a response to the declaration of war. Supposedly, the young artist packaged the bloodied finger and sent it off with a note...
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