page_title: Beniamino Bufano
section_title: San Francisco public spaces
hierarchical_section_title: Beniamino Bufano / Works / Northern California and San Francisco Bay Area public spaces / San Francisco public spaces
caption_attribution_description: English: The map shows where each public work is located. Numbers on the map suggest the shortest route that the dedicated driving (or bicycling?) Bufano enthusiast might follow.
context_page_description: Beniamino "Benny" Bufano was an Italian American sculptor, best known for his large-scale monuments representing peace and his modernist work often featured smoothly rounded animals and relatively simple shapes. He worked in ceramics, stone, stainless steel, and mosaic, and sometimes combined two or more of these media and some of his works are cast stone replicas. He had a variety of names used, and sometimes went by the name Benvenuto Bufano because he admired Benvenuto Cellini. His youthful nickname was "Bene," which was often anglicized into "Benny." He had lived in Northern California for much of his career.
context_section_description: The numbers on the map and below suggest the shortest route by which a driver (or intrepid cyclist) may visit all of the Bufano sculptures in public spaces of San Francisco.
  01) Elephant (n.d.): 3-foot (1 m) bronze statue is located at the Museo ItaloAmericano, 2 Marina Blvd., Building C
  02) Hand of Peace (n.d.): bronze with enamel statue, also at the Museo ItaloAmericano, 2 Marina Blvd., Building C
  03) Madonna (begun in 1962): almost 14-feet (4 m.) high, with a mosaic of young faces, pink, yellow and black.  In a film portrait which contains a lengthy segment on creating this mosaic, Bufano states,"The figure of a child.  It's a composite figure of all the races." The monument is located in the Great Meadow, Upper Fort Mason; 150 yards north of 1325 Bay Street
  04) Frog (1942): 16" (.5 m) high, this work is located on the balcony of the Maritime Museum, 900 Beach Street.
  05) Seal (1942): 42" (1 m) high, also located at the Maritime Museum, 900 Beach Street
  06) St. Francis de la Varenne (1928): this 18-foot [5.5 m.] monument is located on the south-east corner of Beach and Taylor Streets, Fisherman's Wharf.
  07) The Penguin:  Golden Gateway Center, 480 Davis Court, near the south-east corner of Davis and Jackson Streets.  The work is displayed across the street diagonally from Sydney Walton Square, a sculpture park.
  08) Sun Yat-sen (1937): Saint Mary's Square, corner of Quincy and California Street. This 12-foot [3.5 m] statue is said to be among Bufano's most famous works.
  09) The Penguins: entrance to the Stanford Court Hotel, 905 California Street
  10) St. Francis (1970): Grace Cathedral, 1100 California Street. The black and bronze, 5-foot [1.5 m) tall sculpture was originally located at the St. Francis Hotel but was moved to its current location in 1993.
  11) St. Francis on Horseback (1935): 8-feet (2.5 m) tall; Westside Courts Housing Project, across from 2550 Sutter, in the courtyard behind the basketball court
  12) Bear (1930s): University of California, San Francisco, 608 Parnassus Street
  13) Bear and Cubs (1968): University of California, San Francisco, 530 Parnassus Street
  14) Female Torso:  Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial Branch Library, 1 Jose Sarria Court; in the front lobby
  15) Rabbit, Seals, Fish, Bear and Cubs, Cat and Mouse: Valencia Gardens Housing (1930s): in the courtyard next to 33 Maxwell Court.
  16) The Madonna: San Francisco General Hospital, courtyard at the north-east corner of Potrero Avenue and 22nd Street
  17) Saint Francis of the Guns (1968); City College of San Francisco, Ocean Campus, between Phelan Avenue and the front entrance to the Science Building.  Constructed of melted guns from a voluntary weapons amnesty program in San Francisco, this work was inspired by the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. On the robe of St Francis is a mosaic tile mural of four of America's assassinated leaders: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy and John F. Kennedy.
  18) Granite Nude Torso [male] (1934): San Francisco State University, courtyard between HSS and the Business Buildings, 1600 Holloway Avenue
  19) Head of St. Francis (1938): San Francisco State University, main quadrangle, between the Business Building and the Student Center, 1600 Holloway Avenue
  20) Penguin’s Prayer (1939): 11 Lake Merced Boulevard, between Brotherhood Way and John Muir Drive
  21) Peace (1939): opposite the Calvary Armenian Congregational Church, 725 Brotherhood Way.  This 30-foot (9 m) monument was relocated to Brotherhood Way in 1996 after nearly four decades at the San Francisco International Airport.
  22) Bear and Head of Peace (ca. 1935-1940): Sunnydale Projects Community Center, in Visitacion Valley, San Francisco, 1654 Sunnydale Avenue
caption: Locations of Bufano's sculptures in public spaces of San Francisco
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "1465", "Image ImageLength": "1238", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "150", "Image YResolution": "150", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2018:11:03 20:40:19", "Image ExifOffset": "232", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "382", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7174", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1509", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1275"}