Creative, ingenious, whimsical. These adjectives are just some aspects of Aldo Buggiani's unique personality. He works full time on his own, creating paintings, miniatures and dioramas.
How the project was born
The idea of creating a portal to exhibit my works and give other artists the opportunity to contribute with their works by setting up galleries of their own dioramas and miniatures came to me almost by chance. Having worked in a tannery for many years, before retiring I thought I would make a model of the machinery I spent a lot of time with. Before this, when I had time and above all inspiration I dedicated myself to painting. Once the first model was made, in addition to the compliments, I was criticized because it didn’t work. I then decided to remake the same model but in working order. A challenge that I still remember today because not only did I have to aesthetically reproduce the machinery, but I had to devise a way to make it work. Once the project was finished I thought that if I had managed to make that model I could make others too. So I decided to make all the machinery used in the tannery. The idea of creating an educational exhibition for school children came to me then. Unfortunately I was not understood. Wandering through social media I saw an image of a diorama created by a Japanese artist. I was so impressed by that work that I felt within myself that it was the way to go. Landscape dioramas. Making a copy of the diorama that artist had made was the first objective. But I only had that photo available as a model. I still hadn’t been able to find this artist’s page. So I made my first diorama which wasn’t as perfect as the original, but it was a good start. Dedicating myself to making landscape dioramas, at a certain point I thought of sharing a portal with other artists that would give each of them the possibility of exhibiting their own works as if it were a museum.
The study in the workshop
Here Aldo Buggiani is in the workshop intent on how to solve the problems that arise during the construction of each model. The difficulty of creating a miniature dynamic machine from scratch and making it work as if it were real is an attractive challenge.
Sometimes he goes through days and isn’t able to solve problems. Get to the evening and keep thinking about how to find the solution.
When I’m working I find it difficult to even listen to someone talk to me. I’m so immersed in the project that I can’t divert my attention, time passes so quickly that I don’t notice that it’s already evening.
A visionary beginning, a path that aimed to reproduce the functioning machinery used for the entire leather processing cycle in the tannery.
The first dynamic model of a spray for leather in a tannery.
I donated the first model to a non-profit association here in Santa Croce sull’Arno.
It all starts with this model, the first by Aldo Buggiani.