Massimo Bandera

Member of BCI, UBI, IBS, IBI, ESA, NBC, NBA, RHS, SKB, SBI, BCI Director

Massimo Bandera, born in 1967, lives and works between Italy and Spain and has dedicated his passion and professionalism to the world of Bonsai since 1978.

He has created a contemporary avant-garde path in his technical and artistic research, studying the arts and sciences in Italy and Japan. He has maintained a twenty-five-year cultural exchange with master Masahiko Kimura, the leading exponent of the avant-garde Bonsai.

Member of the Italian Botanical Society, in 1999, he was admitted to visit the collection of Bonsai of the Emperor of Japan, and in 2000 he founded his school, the Fuji Kyookai Bonsai avant-garde school, at the Fuji Sato Company. In 2002 he opened the Spanish section at the Bonsai Museum of Marbella, in 2010 in Majorca, and in 2018 in Malaga in the University Botanical Garden.

Winner of numerous awards in Italy, Spain, Japan, and the United States, he is a life member, instructor,ambassador, and director of Bonsai Club International. He is an instructor of the Italian association IBS, a member, and a UBI instructor. In 2007 his works were exhibited at Palazzo Bricherasio in Turin and the Fujiyohaku Congress exhibition in Nole and Marbella with the extraordinary participation of Master Masahiko Kimura at his school.

In 2002 he published the “Bonsai Encyclopedia” and in 2008, “Avant-garde Bonsai,” which collected the teachings of Japanese cultivation, technique, aesthetics, and culture.

Since the eighties, he has written in the leading magazines of the sector and the Corriere dell’arte in Turin. His articles are published in: Bonsai Italy, Italian Bonsai and Bonsai art and Nature, UBI Newsletter, Bonsai and Suiseki magazine in Italy, Bonsai Actual and native Bonsai in Spain, Esprit Bonsai in France, BCI Bonsai & Stone Appreciation magazine, Bonsai Sunjiu and Kindai Bonsai in Japan.

In April 2010, in San Marino, during the XIV Italian National Congress UBI, he was the first representative of the Belpaese to receive a State award, the Bonsai Award of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities of the Italian Republic.

In 2015 he received the knightly title of Knight of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, and in 2019 the title of Commander of the Order itself.