Andrew Bucci

Andrew Bucci (b. 16 January 1922) is a Mississippi-born artist residing in Maryland. He is best known for producing colorful, abstract watercolors reflecting a variety of motifs that include nature, human faces and figures, and mythology.

A native of Vicksburg, Mississippi, Bucci was influenced early in his career by Mississippi artist and teacher Marie Atkinson Hull, with whom he began studying in the 1930s.

Bucci graduated from St. Aloysius High School in Vicksburg in 1938 and earned a degree in architectural engineering from Louisiana State University. After college, Bucci was trained as a meteorologist and served in World War II, which allowed him to study at the Académie Julian in Paris. With a passion for painting fueled by his European experience, Bucci enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago where he received a B.F.A. in 1952 and an M.F.A. in 1954. He also studied art at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City.

When Bucci returned to Mississippi, he continued to paint under the tutelage of Hull, who became influenced by his style. She remained an influential figure in the region's art scene until her death in 1980.

Bucci has spent most of his career in Maryland and the Washington D.C. area, where he currently resides. He worked for the National Meteorological Center in Maryland from 1956 until his retirement in 1979. He continues to paint and produce artwork, and in more recent years, he has created a number of needlepoint reproductions of his paintings.

He has exhibited with the Society of Washington Artists and served as president of the Washington Watercolor Society.

His paintings have been viewed throughout the South for over half a century, beginning with the Mississippi Art Association in 1947 and including exhibitions at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in 1952, 1965 and 1979. His works have been part of numerous national and regional shows at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Pennsylvania Academy of Design and New Orleans Museum of Art, among others.

Bucci’s works are included in the following collections: Arkansas Arts Center, Brooks Memorial Gallery, Mississippi Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans), Florence Art Gallery (South Carolina), Municipal Art Gallery (Jackson, Miss.), Delta State University, Hinds Community College and Mississippi University for Women.

In 2007 Bucci donated a number of materials to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. The archive includes several of his own works of art, six figure drawings with fellow student H.C. Westermann modeling from a life drawing class at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1947-48; letters, postcards, and handmade holiday cards to Bucci from artists Anna Baker, Marie Hull, Dan Flavin, and Hosford Fontaine; and printed material regarding the artists and the Allison’s Wells art colony in Way, Mississippi. Also included are printed material such as newspaper clippings, exhibition catalogs and announcements, brochures, programs and illustrated calendars.