Pugi, born at Fiesole in 1850, was an Italian sculptor in alabaster and marble. He lived in Florence from 1870 to his death, heading what became an industrial-scale sculpture business of two factory sites, a central Florence office and studio, its own marble quarry and an apparently sophisticated international marketing operation. The official Italian gazette of 1898 showed him in partnership with a brother as ‘Pugi, Fortunato e Guglielmo, F[rate]lli… (Scultori)’, though the exact role of Fortunato is unknown. An annual directory of Italian exporters in 1908 lists them at 12, via Borgognissanti. Guglielmo was later joined by his two sons, Gino (b.1897) and Fiorenzo (b.1900), and after working with him as ‘Guglielmo Pugi e figli’ they succeeded him using the studio signature of ‘Fratelli G. e F. Pugi’ but apparently only from 1935 and with some variations. This suggests that a received death date for Guglielmo of 1915 is likely to be wrong.
Pugi did some noted individual works, including a bust of King Umberto I of Italy (1844–1900) set up as his monument at Fiesole in 1901 but now lost. Most of the later family output, however, was decorative sculpture in Art Nouveau style for export, mainly to the USA. They exhibited at the Pan-American Exhibition at Buffalo, NY, in 1901 and in 1904 at the St Louis World’s Fair (formally the ‘Louisiana Purchase Exposition’) at St Louis, Missouri. The 1920s receipt mentioned above also lists exhibition medals won at Vienna 1899, Paris 1900, Milan 1905, Liege 1906, and Turin 1911, and diplomas at Gand and Monaco in 1899, and Brussels in 1910. A similar list in the catalogue is illegible on-screen but its works images show production was substantially mechanised.
Guglielmo’s Italian Wikipedia entry lists museums in Arlaty (Kyrgyzstan) and Arlon (Belgium) as each holding a marble bust by him, and five alabaster pieces in the Museo Storico dell’Alabastro at Volterra, Italy. The only example in public UK hands, bearing the signature ‘G.F. F.lli Pugi Firenze’ (i.e. the sons) is a Carrara-marble bust of Dante’s muse ‘Beatrice’ in Lancashire County Museums. It is probably one of many versions in both marble and alabaster of which the original was presumably by Guglielmo, since he showed a ‘Beatrice’ at Buffalo in 1901. As the Lancashire example is not notably ‘Art Nouveau’, the original on which it is based may have dated to the mid-1870s.
Summarised from Art UK's Art Detective discussion 'Is the sculptor Guglielmo Pugi?'
Text source: Art Detective
