Benny Bufano

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Statue of Sun Yat-sen by sculptor Benny Bufano in San Francisco's Chinatown St. Mary's Park

Beniamino Benvenuto Bufano (October 14, 1898 - August 16, 1970) was a California-based Italian American sculptor, best known for his large-scale -- usually granite -- monuments. His modernist work often featured smoothly rounded animals and relatively simple shapes.

Bufano was born in San Fele, Italy, but was brought to the United States by his family at the age of three. He spent his childhood in New York City and was educated by private tutors, eventually studying at the Arts Student League from 1913 to 1915. He first came to San Francisco to work on a sculpture for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, alongside Dirk Van Erp. Afterwards, he traveled extensively before returning to settle permanently in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Considered an outspoken radical at the time, Bufano chopped off his trigger finger and sent it to President Woodrow Wilson at the onset of World War I as a protest against the war. In addition to his work as a sculptor, he taught at the San Francisco Institute of Art (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.

Some of his best-known works include the statue of Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen in San Francisco's Chinatown and his 93-foot (28-meter) sculpture Peace in coastal Timber Cove (near Jenner, California). Examples of his distinctive and large-scale work can be found throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, and there is a Bufano Sculpture Garden at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.