Bufano at Westside Courts

 Posted by on January 31, 2013
Jan 312013
 

Westside Courts Housing Project
2501 Sutter Street
Lower Pacific Heights

Bufano at Westside Courts Housing Project

This sculpture, by well known San Francisco sculptor  Beniamino Bufano, is titled Saint Francis on Horseback.  Standing  8′ x 6′ and of black granite  it is located in the central courtyard of the project. It was made in 1935 but not placed here until 1945.

Westside Courts were built in 1943, Westside includes 136 units in six buildings that cover a full city block. Westside s unusual because it is located in a thriving, mixed-income neighborhood. Another distinction is in its construction, which relied on heavy cement blocks, creating buildings that have suffered less from degradation over time.

Westside is a development that has exceeded its useful life. The development is more than 65 years old, and residents live with outdated appliances; unpredictable plumbing, mechanical, and electrical systems; extensive rodent problems; and other issues that affect their health and quality of life.

Westside  comes under the purvue of HOPE SF, a subsidiary of the San Francisco Housing Authority.

Beniamino Bufano on Sutter Street in San Francisco

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Benny Bufano St. Francis on Horseback

Benny Bufano in the Sunnydale Projects

 Posted by on December 12, 2012
Dec 122012
 

1654 Sunnydale
Visitacion Valley

This Beniamino Bufano statue is of a Bear over the Head of Peace.  It was done somewhere around 1935-1940 and stands in front of the Community Center at the Sunnydale Projects.  Bufano was a prolific sculptor in his time and his work can be found all over San Francisco.

Sunnydale was built in the 1940’s as a means to house military personnel and their families, it was later bought by the city of San Francisco and converted to a low-income housing project.

The Housing Authority was created in 1938 to help poor families build better lives by creating temporary subsidized housing. Over the years, the once well-kept projects turned into havens for crime, and the services that families need to get out and move on – such as child care, job training, legal help and counseling – evaporated with cutbacks.

Sunnydale, is quite possibly the most dangerous, depressed and decrepit area of the city. The dilapidated barracks that make up the development are lined up on a hillside in the shadow of the Cow Palace, opposite McLaren Park.

An estimated 1,633 people live in the square mile of concrete housing. Once considered a nice place for a family to live, the development is now home to those who can’t afford anything else.

The above was from a February 2008 SF Gate article by Leslie Fulbright.  A two part series titled Life at the Bottom.

 

Sun Yat Sen

 Posted by on September 8, 2011
Sep 082011
 
Chinatown
St Mary’s Square
Quincy, Pine, California and Kearny Streets
Sculpted by Beniaminio Bufano
This 12 foot statue is inscribed (in Chinese):
Dr. Sun Yat Sen 1866-1925
Father of the Chinese Republic and First President
Founder of the Kuo Min Tang
Champion of Democracy
Lover of mankind: Proponent of friendship and peace among the nations,
based on equality, justice and goodwill
Bufano has been in this blog before.  His work usually used an easily-recognized style of glazed terra-cotta, a technique he learned from porcelain glazers while traveling in China. Also while in China, Bufano met and befriended the Chinese revolutionary leader, Dr. Sun Yat Sen. His claim to have stayed at the Sun home has never been substantiated, but it is clear he knew the man.
When Sun was in political exile, he visited San Francisco with the largest Chinese community outside Asia, to rally support for his overthrow of the Manchu Empire. Sun was successful in founding the Chinese Republic in 1911, and was inaugurated as first president on January 1, 1912. He served only six weeks, but the republic lasted more than a year. Dr. Sun lived until 1924.
In 1938, Chinatown business leaders commissioned this stainless steel and red granite statue of Sun, to commemorate Sun’s visit to the city. Bufano received the commission.
Dr. Sun Yat Sen was recently described by the People’s Daily (official paper of China) as, “the forerunner of the democratic revolution in China.…a great revolutionary and a great statesman who fought against imperialist aggression and for the independence and freedom of China.” Dr. Sun was among the first graduates of the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese.
Photographers note:  That is a pigeon on Dr. Sun’s head.  The bane of statuary photography.

 

Guns and Roses

 Posted by on June 9, 2011
Jun 092011
 
San Francisco City College
Ocean Avenue

At the entrance to San Francisco City College is “St. Francis of the Guns” by Bufano.  Born in Italy, in 1898, Beniamino Benvenuto Bufano taught at the California School of Fine Arts, now the San Francisco Art Institute, (but was dismissed in 1923 because he was considered too modern), the University of California, Berkeley, and Oakland’s California College of Arts and Crafts so his work is (or should be) well known to natives.

Following the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, then Mayor, Joseph Alioto, initiated a voluntary turn-in drive that yielded 2000 handguns. He commissioned Bufano to use the gunmetal in a sculpture.  Bufano had it forged in Italy, adding bronze to the gunmetal to keep it from corroding in the city’s foggy weather. A mosaic inlay depicts John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Abraham Lincoln, all victims of assassination by handguns, above a multi-racial children’s chorus. The sculpture was dedicated by Mayor George Moscone who was himself assassinated by a handgun eighteen months later.  Bufano died in 1970.

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