BUGATTI, Ettore - b. 1881 Milano, d. 1947 Paris

Italian automobile designer and manufacturer. Bugatti was born into an artistic family with its origin in Milan. He was the elder son of Carlo Bugatti, an Art Nouveau furniture and jewellery designer, his younger brother Rembrandt was an animal sculptor. His aunt, Luigia Bugatti, was the wife of the painter Giovanni Segantini. His paternal grandfather, Giovanni Luigi Bugatti, was an architect and sculptor.

Ettore revealed a talent for mechanics at an early age and went on to become internationally known as a designer of exclusive cars and racing cars. He is remembered as the founder and proprietor of the automobile manufacturing company Automobiles E. Bugatti, which he founded in 1909 in the then German town of Molsheim in the Alsace region of what is now France.