History of BUGATTI 1856 ~ 1916

1856 – 1940

Carlo Bugatti

Carlo Bugatti, the father of Ettore and Rembrandt Bugatti, was born on 16 February 1856 in Milan. He was the son of the architect and sculptor Giovanni Luigi Bugatti.

He studied at the Brera Academy in Milan and the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1880, he began his career as an architect in Milan. The same year, he married Carlo Bugatti Teresa Lorioli. Their children were Ettore (born 1881), Deanice (born 1883) and Rembrandt (born 1884). The Bugattis’ circle of relatives and friends included major artists. Carlo was friends with, for instance, the composer Giacomo Puccini and the painter Giovanni Segantini, the husband of his sister Luigia.

Carlo Bugatti’s artistic work included ceramics, paintings, silverware and textiles. However, most famous of all were his furniture designs. Influenced by Art Nouveau, Carlo Bugatti developed his own formal style. His work was noteworthy for the use of exotic, highly refined woods and copper, parchment and mother of pearl inlays. The first exhibition of his furniture took place in 1888 at the Fine Arts Fair in Milan. In the summer of that year, his furniture won an honorary award at the international Italian Exhibition in London. Subsequently, Carlo Bugatti’s furniture became famous and was in demand across the globe – the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, for example, used it to furnish their Turkish Salon. Following further exhibitions in Amsterdam and Antwerp and reviews in international newspapers, Carlo Bugatti’s furniture won the silver medal at the Paris World Fair – marking the high point of its fame.

In 1904, at the age of 48, Carlo Bugatti sold his Milan studio and moved to Paris, where he worked for Grands Magasins Dufayel and Le Bon Marché. He also produced silver- and bronzeware. Six years later, he left Paris again to set up a new studio in Pierrefonds near Compiègne. From 1914 to 1918, he was the town’s mayor. In 1935, Carlo’s wife Teresa died. Two years later, aged 81, he moved to Molsheim to join his son Ettore.

Carlo Bugatti died in Molsheim in April 1940.

1881 – 1947

Ettore Bugatti

Ettore Arco Isidoro Bugatti was born in Milan on 15^th of September 1881 and the eldest son of Carlo and Teresa Bugatti. At the age of 17 he began an apprenticeship at the bicycle and tricycle factory Prinetti & Stucchi. Just a year later, he built his first motorised vehicle there using two De Dion engines. A year after that, he built his first four-wheeled motor car with the financial backing of Count Guinelli. Named the Type 2, it won the top prize at an internationally renowned exhibition in Milan in 1901 and attracted the attention of the car manufacturer Eugène de Dietrich from Alsace. In 1902, Ettore became head of car production at Eugène’s company, De Dietrich. Until 1904, Ettore Bugatti developed new models at De Dietrich and entered several motor races. 

In 1907, Ettore Bugatti married Barbara Maria Guiseppina Mascherpa. Together, they had two sons and two daughters. The same year, he signed a contract with the Deutz gas engine factory in Cologne and began building his own, extremely lightweight race car at home in his cellar. This car was launched a few years later as the first car to take the Bugatti name – the Bugatti Type 13.

In 1909, Bugatti prematurely ended the contract with Deutz, took his severance pay and leased a disused dyeworks in Molsheim, Alsace, where he founded his own car factory, Automobiles Ettore Bugatti. The Peugeot Bébé was developed there in 1911 and produced under licence by Peugeot, and there were further licences for Rabag, Diatto and Crossley. Bugatti also began production of the Type 13. 

When the First World War broke out, Ettore Bugatti moved with his family firstly to Milan and then to Paris, where he produced designs for eight-cylinder and 16-cylinder airplane engines. After the end of the war, the family moved back to Alsace, which was now part of France, and reopened the car factory at the old site.

Ettore Bugatti began producing lightweight sports cars again and achieving racing success – for instance, a win in Le Mans in 1920 and a fourfold victory in Brescia in 1921. In 1925, by Ettore’s count there were 412 wins in just nine months for race cars produced by Bugatti. In the early 1930s, Ettore Bugatti also began producing Autorail trains with Royale engines alongside the production of cars. In 1934, production began on the Type 57, based on a design by Ettore Bugatti’s oldest son Jean. It was Bugatti’s last production car.

Two years later, Ettore Bugatti handed over management of the car factory to his son.

Ettore was disappointed in his workers after a general strike was called throughout France and, facing mounting debts, returned to Paris. Shortly prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, Jean Bugatti moved the production facilities to Bordeaux. In 1939, Jean Bugatti died during a test drive. Ettore Bugatti was forced to sell the factory in Molsheim by the German occupying forces. Even after the war, he could no longer recreate his former successes. Following the death of Barbara Bugatti in July 1944, Ettore Bugatti remarried and had two more children with his new wife, Geneviève Marguerite Delcuze.

Ettore Bugatti died in Paris on 21 August 1947.

1884 – 1916

Rembrandt Bugatti

Rembrandt Bugatti was born in Milan on 16 October 1884. He was the third child of Carlo and Teresa Bugatti and the younger brother of Ettore Bugatti. Growing up in the family home, he became acquainted with major artists such as the composers Giacomo Puccini and Ruggero Leoncavallo, the sculptor Ercole Rosa and the painter Giovanni Segantini, the husband of his aunt Luigia. It is said that it was Segantini who suggested the name Rembrandt for his nephew. 

Inspired by Prince Paul Trubetzkoy, Rembrandt began creating sculptures at a very young age. In 1900, he began his studies at the Brera Academy in Milan – where his father Carlo had also once studied – and quickly earned a reputation as the academy’s most talented sculptor. Right from the start, Rembrandt Bugatti concentrated on sculptures of animals, initially using plaster and later bronze. By 1903, he had exhibited in Milan, Turin and Venice.

In 1904, Rembrandt moved to Paris with his family, and was soon accepted into the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Three years later, he moved to Antwerp, Belgium by himself. Antwerp was home not only to Belgium’s most important art academy, the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten, but also a large zoo with numerous exotic animals that Rembrandt Bugatti used as models. His sculpture of a rearing elephant would later adorn the radiator cap of his brother Ettore’s world-famous Bugatti Royale.

After 1910, Rembrandt’s statuettes made increasingly less use of natural forms and – probably due to the influence of Cubism – tended towards more geometric, structured and angular forms. In the course of this development, Rembrandt Bugatti became a pioneer of Art Deco. An expert who saw his sculptures without knowing who made them or when would estimate that they were produced around a decade later than they actually were. Nowadays, they sell for record prices to rival his brother Ettore’s cars.

At the start of the First World War, Rembrandt Bugatti volunteered for the Belgian Red Cross and worked at a military hospital set up in Antwerp Zoo. Under the influence of these experiences, he became depressed, and this depression was made even worse by his increasing financial difficulties – due to the war, he could barely sell any of his artworks.

On 8 January 1916, Rembrandt Bugatti took his own life in his Paris home, aged just 31.