Anselmo Bucci (Fossombrone 1887 - Monza 1955) CAFÉ DE LA CUPOLE oil with canvas, 54x65 cm signed lower right CAFE' DE LA CUPOLE oil on canvas, cm 54x65 signed lower right Provenance Galleria d'Arte Solferino, Milan Private collection Exhibition Una stanza a Montmartre. Il paesaggio francese nella pittura italiana da Boldini a Birolli, Museo della Permanente, 7 November, Milan 1998- 13 January 1999, p.63; Arte in transizione 1885-1930, pittura italiana da alcune collezioni lombarde, Tortona, Pinacoteca della Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Tortona, 1 November 2008-15 March 2009, pp. 82, 83, n.33. Literature C. Vela and G.Raboni (eds.) Una stanza a Montmartre. Il paesaggio francese nella pittura italiana da Boldini a Birolli, exhibition catalogue, (Museo della Permanente, 7 November, Milan 1998- 13 January 1999) Milan 1998, p.63; S.Fugazza, A. Guarnaschelli and Paul Nicholls, (ed. ) Arte in transizione 1885-1930, pittura italiana da alcune collezioni lombarde. Exhibition catalogue (Tortona, Pinacoteca della Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Tortona, 1 November 2008-15 March 2009), Milan 2008, pp. 82, 83, n.33 The nocturnal scene is enlivened by Café alla Coupole , one of the haunts of the beautiful world in the transgressive Montparnasse, seems to translate into painting the thought expressed by the artist in his Autobiography and quoted in the margins of a small, sophisticated exhibition held at Permanente in 1998 in which our painting appeared for the first time (C.Vela, in Una stanza a Montmarte.., cit., p. 116). Bucci recounts the impressions of a festive night, it is 14 July, at the Porte S.Martin: "Colours of the crowd, at night: black, grey, dove grey, green, yellow, red yellow, white, Naples yellow. Blue makes green: salmon orange. The light on the dark, sharp; the dark among them, fused. The arabesque counts, the relief is not there. The lights on the ground, green. With the same refined cormia the painter captures in the faces, in the attitudes, in the refined fashions of the fashionable hats and even in the extraordinary still lifes of bottles and glasses on tables, the elegant individuality of a restless, worldly crowd that, in the entertainment of guarded conversations, admires and is admired by the animated landscape of pedestrians and carriages flowing along the boulevard, illuminated by electric lights. In 1914, at the end of his Parisian sojourn begun eight years earlier, Bucci painted some more lively crowd images with the same expressionistic stroke; in April, he exhibited at the Choiseul Gallery with Picasso,Utrillo and Van Dongeg: it is possible that the absorbed woman, with her chin on her hand, in Café de la Coupole, Paris, is an albeit unintentional quotation from Picasso. It is easier to think that Bucci drew, in some way, on the beautiful Van Gogh: the Ballroom at Arles of 1888, donated to the Musée d'Orsay in 1950 by Mr. and Mrs. Mayer, so close are the affinities of cut, setting, colour and atmosphere. Alda Guarnaschelli (in: Art in Transition 1885-1930, op. cit ., Milan 2008, p. 82)