With St. Francis and the Madonna of his childhood watching over him, Bufano’s art began to focus on themes of peace, especially the human hand as a peace symbol. This preoccupation seems to have started after Bufano lost his finger in 1917 and perhaps was stimulated by the accident and the constant reminder of his loss. Indeed, the incident initiated a mystique that surrounded the artist for the rest of his life and that surrounds him still: Bufano wove the symbol of the hand into much of his art and it played an increasingly important role in his ideology.
In “The Hand is the Father of the Brain” he wrote:
Blessed be the hand, the co-symbol of the mind’s eye. The hand is the symbol illuminating the heart…. It is my prayer, my hope, and my will that the hand is man’s will to peace, reaching out and calling to man to abandon man’s inhumanity to man and to abandon the cruelties of war. Such is the hand, the divine symbol of oneness, the spiritual tears and song of peace reaching out to the family of man.
The open hand, known to Buddhists as Abhaya Mudra, is an internationally recognized sign of peace. As a young man living and traveling throughout Asia, Bufano visited many of the ancient Buddhist monuments and became very familiar with Abhaya Mudra.
During the course of his career, Bufano produced many small and big versions of a sculpture he entitled Hand of Peace. Bufano often decorated the palms of his sculpted hands, recalling the Buddhist art he had seen in Asia.
Photos from left to right:
– Hand of Peace sculpture located at Walnut Creek Civic Park
– Detail from St.Francis of the Guns sculpture located in front of the entrance to the Science building of the City College of San Francisc
