Estrangement from the avant-garde and the "neo-pastism" of the final yearsi (1969 - 1984)

Around the end of the nineteen-sixties, Antonio Bueno underwent a new stylistic change , which marked a radical turning point in his career. His adherence to the avant-garde school of thought, though sincere, was marred by certain fundamental doubts (as well as by his past as hyper-realist, which he never completely forsook). An explicit symptom of the endurance of certain preferences had been (from about 1958 on) the re-emergence of the figurative element, which he never abandoned afterwards and which he preserved even during the most outrageous experiments carried out during the "Gruppo '70" phase. His estrangement from the avant-garde was quite sudden, the result, however, of a lengthy incubation. To grasp the reasons why the figurative dominates in Bueno's painting, it is helpful to read some of the notes he jotted down in his diary in later life (the following extract dates from March 1982):

Even philosophers of genius may make the most outlandish statements about things artistic. For Kant music was necessarily more beautiful if associated with words. Naturally, if another genius, such as Beethoven, was convinced of the value of such an affirmation , he could, in turn, make that theory seem true by writing his Ninth Symphony (which, however sublime, it is no more so than many of his other works). The exact opposite theory is that of Appollinaire who advocated a kind of painting - which, like music - should be able, therefore obliged, to do without the representation of things. Many artists have produced masterpieces, the fruit of genius or the intellect, which make this theory seem true (in the name of presumed greater purity of art, which really means confusing the medium with the end) ; but in reality even Klee's most perfect picture will prove less communicative than a portrait by Goya or Raffaello. It would have been better had the philosophers and critics, instead of formulating so many deep or ingenious theories, parted from this double consideration: music is efficacious, and many centuries have revealed this, even without the aid of concepts; painting, on the other hand, has been equally efficacious, over a similar stretch of time, only availing itself of concepts […] One may reason at length to explain why things stand as they do, but there is no denying the facts, and the facts are these, whether the theoreticians like it or not.

Bueno's divorce from the avant-gard was rapid and left no aftermath, it occurred around the end of 1968, the same year in which the "Gruppo '70" ended. In December of that year the artist wrote an open letter, of a more ironical than polemical tone, to Sergio Salvi (one of the founders of the "Gruppo '70") ; a document which, considering its importance, is well worth quoting from beginning to end.

My present intolerance of the avant-garde, an intolerance which obliges me, as you know, to define myself "neo-rearguard" , reveals above all, how much I am in reality - notwithstanding my past involvement in certain "advanced" experiences - an incurable romantic. It is not only the perfection of the works of so many "neo-experimentalists" that bores me, but also the fact that those who produce them are, in effect, so numerous.

Once, to belong to the avant-garde meant facing discomfort, risks. The artist, the poor and misunderstood hero, travelled alone in a vast no-man's land extending beyond the well-groomed gardens of official art. Stuff of other times. With progress, things are no longer so. Since, that is, everyone has realised that the avant-garde is, when all is said and done, the best of investments, the multitude of the innovators has swollen so as to include practically all artists. The result is a crowding in which I should democratically delight like the art critics, freed at last from the task of having to distinguish between the real and the fake avant-garde, the good from the bad, the innovators from the academics. Thank God, as we are all of the avant-garde, there is no further trace of academism. As to me, on the contrary - look how perversely asocial I have become - the fact that there are so many of us upsets me. I have by now realised that the massive shift of artists towards the more advanced positions has changed the rearguard into an immense desert : paradoxically, no-man's land is now to be found where the majority of the troops were once camped. For the lovers of solitude this is a safe place. What a strange world, scattered with debris of all kinds, left luggage, cumbersome things abandoned there in the hurry to leave. Who knows how many perils, amid these wrecks, who knows , one may even risk being blown sky high by treading, unawares, on a hidden truth.

Therefore, it is with a feeling of dark presentiment that the undersigned will enter those regions. If I do not send back any sign of life for some time, promise me, dear Sergio, to send out a rescue party.

From that moment on Bueno returned definitively to figurative art and began painting full time pictures which he loved to call, with great sense of self-irony, "neo-kitsch" , "neo-pastist", "neo-romantic" or ( to use another of his favourite expressions) "pompieristic". These works of his had now ceased to appear improper; on the contrary, now that he had matured the awareness that in an era where the ungraceful had become the new academic canon, grace might now represent the innovative element. Bueno's idea was, therefore, that "ungraceful" avant-garde neo-conformity might be undermined by a "graceful" kind of painting, pleasant and technically precise (even if, naturally, one had to consider the risk of a superficial reading which overlooked the seditious intent and the underlying ambiguities of that kind of painting, surrendering to its apparent simplicity).

When Antonio Bueno's painting underwent this change of stylistic direction, another important fact occurred. His price quotations (partially due to Italy's "economic boom") began to rise, his works began to be placed more readily on the market. Until about 1970, Bueno had sold paintings in Italy and abroad, but not in Florence (in fact it is difficult to trace the best paintings belonging to the periods before his maturity, as these are scattered over many different countries); now, however, even the Florentines began, finally, to discover him. It must be said that success came after a long and difficult journey. Had he so wished he might well have built up a certain local fame by painting subjects that were in great demand as he had done in his younger days. He preferred to plot a more ambitious career for himself, upon a national and international scale, and, sure of his credentials, impose himself later, even within the sheltered - and so scarcely vital - Tuscan province. In short, Bueno did not build up his success within the four walls of his home, but imported it into Florence having first patiently cultivated it elsewhere. This took time and effort (and was achieved on a very narrow budget), but, in the end, it meant that he was able to manage his life and art with great freedom and obtain significant and enduring consideration.

The favour of the market can lead to a kind of crystallisation of an artist's production: a fairly common occurrence. Something similar happened to Antonio Bueno, in particular during the last twenty years of his production; but this does not mean one that should underestimate on this account the anything but common care and finesse, the high quality and the wealth of resources that went into his work to the very end. In this sense, both he and his brother Xavier were like prisoners serving a life sentence, condemned for having brought the techniques and expressive media of the great painting of the past to the fore again to remain faithful to them forever, coherent with their initial propositions, true to their distinctive eccentric figurative vocation to the very last.

In 1970, Bueno achieved another of his great goals: he succeeded, finally, in becoming an Italian citizen. A rather unpleasant and never-ending story of stubborn bureaucracy preceded this recognitio. Twice, in 1956 and 1965, his application had been turned down by the authorities without any truly plausible reason. However absurd it may seem, the fact is that the artist had to pay the price of a former accusation: during the Fascist period he had been listed as a "subversive" . While awaiting what was his due by law, Bueno (besides being denied his fundamental civic and political rights) could not teach in any of the academic institutions nor exhibit abroad alongside other Italian artists. Finally, to solve the grotesque situation, it was necessary to set up a special commission and promote a national petition: one hundred prestigious intellectuals signed it in support of the artist's request. Among these were senators Eugenio Montale and Carlo Levi who also proposed bringing the matter up in parliament. Luckily this turned out to be unnecessary, as a Presidential decree declaring Antonio Bueno an Italian citizen, was issued.

In 1970 too, Bueno left the house in via di Camerata, where he had lived since 1949, and moved - with his wife, three children and his mother-in-law - to the countryside, about fifteen kilometres from Florence. Here he purchased a large house, surrounded on all sides by woods, on the Montereggi hill (in the Fiesole area). This was to be his last dwelling-place: here he spent the remaining fourteen years of his life. His new home's isolated setting, the distance from the city led him , little by little, to lose contact with the mundane liff, so much so, that during this final period he was able to devote himself to painting with practically no transgressions or digressions whatsoever.

His days (and often his nights too, when insomnia afflicted him) were spent barricaded in his great studio: the telephone was his only link with the outside world. In 1972 he began to collaborate with the art dealer Giovanbattista Bianco. They had met ten years earlier when Bianco dealt with Xavier's work; now he acted on Antonio's behalf, dealing with the critics and the gallery owners, as well as setting up his exhibitions. In reality Bianco became Bueno's agent and personal secretary sparing him the burden of promotion and negotiation, which every artist must unfortunately learn to face. In 1972 the systematic cataloguing of Antonio Bueno's works began, the only valid tool, to date, to guarantee their authenticity. The other significant events that marked Bueno's career in this period were his second personal exhibition in New York, with a catalogue by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti (1973), and the publication of an imposing monographic volume issued by Feltrinelli in 1974, edited by Edoardo Sanguineti and Wanda Lattes.

If during the last period of his life the artist had achieved a certain financial stability, it must be said that his one-time worries were immediately replaced by others of a different nature. His health began to decline rapidly. He suffered from cirrhosis of the liver (diagnosed in 1975), due, most probably, to the deterioration of a badly cured jaundice and aggravated by his daily contact with the dangerous substances contained in the paints and solvents he used. The doctors warned him of the harmfulness of the materials he used to paint, but no one could expect him to give up his art. Furthermore, some of his techniques involved applying fresh paint using his bare finger-tips. By strange coincidence his brother Xavier also suffered from cirrhosis; the same ailment was to prove fatal to both.

Gradually, as his energies diminished, Bueno cut down on social events, stopped frequenting former circles, declined positions which only a few years earlier would have stimulated him. The remoteness of his new home emphasised his tendency to isolate himself from the world even more; during his last years, the initiatives or collective organisations in which he took part became fewer than in the past. In 1977, with some of his former "Gruppo '70" colleagues, he founded an art magazine called "Visual" of which he acted as editor for a few years. Finally, very shortly before his death, he undertook his last adventure, assuming the artistic directorship of a new gallery in Florence (a flop, which cost him great effort and loss of money). On the whole, Bueno ended his career in greater solitude than he began it, without the support of either disciples or true allies, without the possibility of measuring his wits, even at a distance, with his brother (Xavier died in 1979, five years before him). If one excludes the occasional appearance alongside some Florentine painters of the younger generation (Luca Alinari, Fabio De Poli, Giuliano Ghelli), during the final decade of his life, he took practically no part in collective exhibitions.

In the quiet of his Montereggi home, on the contrary, the artist was able to devote himself to many of his favourite activities, apart from his main profession. Besides painting, in fact, he always believed had himself to have a certain talent for architecture and writing. In his new home (a curious cross between a cottage and a farm-house) he was able to express his ability as a planner fully, transforming every room in the place into a building site, making and unmaking every detail until he was satisfied. And he succeeded - although he did not manage to complete his work - in enhancing it considerably, adding a large new garden and compensating for the original designer's lack of taste. As to writing, Bueno had always devoted himself, from the early years of his career, to drawing up scrupulously (not to say maniacally) accurate articles8 , programmatic texts, catalogues - without, naturally, mentioning his diaries. Now, finally, he was in a position to try his hand at creative writing, free from the pressures of his primary activity. From 1983 he began to jot down his memoirs, beginning from 1939, that is, from the moment of his arrival in Italy with his brother Xavier and his mother. He only managed to describe the first two or three years of his Florentine sojourn but he wrote a hundred or so pages, full of interesting information and, all told, very pleasant to read.

Naturally the tyranny of the easel reduced his possibility of devoting time to any other pursuit or to any kind of leisure activity The numerous and constant demands on the family budget meant undertaking extra work which put the artist under considerable strain. He rarely found time to travel; in general, during the short holidays he allowed himself, he always sought places where he could bring along his paints and palette. At about sixty, the guest of his brother Guy9 he was able to spend short periods in Spain, after a lifelong exile of a more or less voluntary nature. It was too late, naturally, to permit him to "return to his roots": he made no attempt in this sense, neither did he take any serious steps to make his work as a painter known in Spain. His bond with Switzerland, his former foster country (which he visited for the last time in 1977), remained stronger.

In 1978, during a personal exhibition at the Spanish gallery in Florence, Antonio Bueno presented an organic collection of his d'après for the first time. These works, re-elaborations , at times respectful, at times irreverent, of famous painters of the past, took up an increasing part of his time during the last years, to such a degree as to form the most substantial and representative nucleus of his latter-day production. D'Après, and a taste for quotation in general were nothing new to Bueno. He had produced many in his early years, for example the D'après Dürer he painted in 1939. It is most likely that it was during his young years, when he went on assiduous pilgrimages to museums all over Europe, that he laid the foundations of his later successful dialogue with the great old masters. The ingenious and passionate imitations of those early years were now replaced by subtle, keen re-readings. In this key, Bueno revisited , from 1979 onwards, the works of Seurat, Giorgione, Titian, Leonardo, Boucher, Campigli, Klee, Picasso and De Chirico ( to mention but a few). In about 1980, he manifested a boundless admiration for Ingres, of whom he became a kind of "posthumous disciple". This great French artist fascinated him probably on account of his Apollo-like serenity, his solid classical faith, untouched by turbid modernist lures: attitudes he tried to instil into his own latter-day paintings, a century and a half later.

Antonio Bueno ended his career on a crescendo, achieving greatest consensus as his life drew to a close; one may say that, in actual fact, he had not enough time to enjoy the success and the honours that he began to reap on all sides. At only sixty-four, death overtook him at his peak, when he was considered one of the greatest Italian masters. Before his death, however, he managed to enjoy one or two gratifying achievements. First of all, the anthological exhibition devoted to him in Florence's Palazzo Strozzi in 1981, which marked the reconciliation between Bueno and his city; during this event, the public, besides getting to see enormous quantities of work from all his periods, had the chance of a first-hand experience of the artist's studio, reconstructed for the occasion on in the premises of the Nuova Strozzina, and watch him at work, either painting or making prints on the press. But Bueno's definitive consecration occurred at the 1984 Venice Biennale, barely a few months before his death, when he was already seriously ill: invited by Giorgio Di Genova, he presented a series of masterpieces (more of his d'aprés) which represented the zenith of all his mature production.

Interest in Antonio Bueno's art did not come to an end with his death, on the contrary, it has continued to grow. Otherwise it would not be possible to explain why the literature on him increases, why initiatives of a certain calibre (such as the prestigious anthological exhibition held in the Museo Nazionale , Castel Sant'Angelo, in Rome in 1987) go on being held.The compilation of a general catalogue of his work - an undertaking which promises to be extremely arduous - may be interpreted as a confirmation of this tendency, a sign that an in-depth assessment and a thorough appraisal of his work is in full progress, more than ten years after his death.