The sculptor Beniamino Benvenuto Bufano was born in Italy in 1898. He spent most of his life in San Francisco. Tiny of stature, he created many large sculptures, favoring granite. Among his better-known works are a statue called 'Peace' at Lake Merced and another of Sun Yat-sen in Chinatown. Bennie, as he was affectionately called, was an anti-war activist who chopped off his trigger finger at the outset of World War I, and sent it to Woodrow Wilson. He died in 1970. Strangely, there is a Bufano sculpture garden at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. While I liked Bufano, whom I had seen a number of times, and enjoy his work, I don't believe that he was a great artist. None of the major museums own any of his work.
The 'Bear' in my picture stands in front of the Ross Town Hall. It was gifted to the town in 1971. The town fathers/mothers decorate it for most holidays, such as Christmas, Easter, and, as you see, the Fourth of July.
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