Burri. Painting, an irreducible presence

Table of contents

BURRI Painting, an irreducible presence Bruno CorĂ

Alberto Burri in his studio in Grottarossa, Rome, c. 1966

16

The Grande Cretto of Gibellina Luca Massimo Barbero

62

Works in Exhibition

73

Appendix Catalogue Solo Exhibitions Biography

162 174 179

Table of contents

BURRI Painting, an irreducible presence Bruno CorĂ

Alberto Burri in his studio in Grottarossa, Rome, c. 1966

16

The Grande Cretto of Gibellina Luca Massimo Barbero

62

Works in Exhibition

73

Appendix Catalogue Solo Exhibitions Biography

162 174 179

BURRI Painting, an irreducible presence Bruno Corà

“Words are no help to me when I try to speak about my painting. It is an irreducible presence that refuses to be converted into any other form of expression.”

Alberto Burri, in The New Decade – 22 European Painters and Sculptors, The Museum of Modern Art, New York 19551

Alberto Burri in his studio in via Nera, Rome, 1959

16

17

BURRI Painting, an irreducible presence Bruno Corà

“Words are no help to me when I try to speak about my painting. It is an irreducible presence that refuses to be converted into any other form of expression.”

Alberto Burri, in The New Decade – 22 European Painters and Sculptors, The Museum of Modern Art, New York 19551

Alberto Burri in his studio in via Nera, Rome, 1959

16

17

Burri: primordia and origins

NOTE In the present text the abbreviation (cat.) followed by a number indicates the reference number of Burri’s works in the Catalogo generale, edited by Bruno Corà, published by the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri in 2015.

18

Twenty-five years after the death of Alberto Burri, a revolutionary master of twentiethcentury and contemporary painting, one might almost say that his art has no need of further interpretations. There have been so many, during his life and afterwards, and the biographies and exegeses concerning him are full of them. They include precocious, masterful and pondered essays and articles by James Johnson Sweeney, Giulio Carlo Argan, Francesco Arcangeli, Maurizio Calvesi, Enrico Crispolti, Cesare Brandi and, most recently, Emily Braun. Nevertheless, the contribution that for me still carries the palm for unsurpassed efficacy is that of the several exertions of Emilio Villa, from the very start and thereafter.

Surfacing intact in Villa’s pages are intuitions and illuminations that are not only poetic – which would in themselves be enough to attribute to him, over and over, admiring recognition – but also nuggets of hermeneutic force and felicity that call for a reappraisal of the aspects and arguments of his divinatory critical activity. Here I refer in particular to his first contributions, dating to the early 1950s, in which I find an indication of Burri’s poetics that triggers an interesting way into the artistic directions he took in the years following his debut in Rome. At the conclusion of an early article, Villa stated that Burri’s is a “superior initiative […] of cellular decomposition of the original void, the cosmic void […] a palingenetic visitation” (1951),2 and hence a work aimed at a new origin. In a later article he emphasised: “Our cast-off elegiac, dumbfounded, composite cosmogony, epic in snapshots, everyday tragedies, rhapsodic miniature of the great formations of time […].

In the memory of the dwellings on piles there’s much to become the matter of a brief and troubled painting surface, a painting in a manner of speaking and, on the other hand, of any other action performed to reveal specific and irrefutable meanings. Alberto Burri cultivates as if in vitro, or rather as if in linen, these contractile anatomies of unexpressed organisms, wavering between a semblance of redundant biological materials and an ideal of fulminous universes from gigantic to minimal. A gaping ambiguity, a desire to embrace the memory of things that have to be clarified; a plaintive cosmogony conjectured with the mere innocence of nondescript materials: the rejected neighbourhood rags, tacky paints, amorphous pastes in a state between decay and crystallisation, cast-off timbers destined to water or fire, tarmac and mucilage. A world of run-of-the mill waste can become analogous and congenial to those with mightiest imagination. In any corner of the world a lively and disinterested eye such as that which fires the vision of Alberto Burri can surprise and draw forth the surge originating from higher realms where breathes the precise meaning of our secular and popular epic” (1952).3 In the conclusion to this second text Villa leaves no doubt about the dimension to which he believes Burri has directed his artistic action: “I recall Burri’s great invention: the opaque, after all the daring opacity, fished from the bottom of the other colours and formed into highly expressive concretions: the existence of the world in its purity turned almost into elegance, lightness conceived within matter, before unification and before separation…” 4 We should also recall that, while Villa was in Brazil between 1951 and 1952, working for the MASP (Museo d’Arte di São Paulo), he devoted himself avidly to the culture of prehistoric man. Nor should we overlook what I see as a little-explored but significant aspect of Villa’s interest in the ‘primordial’, along with his assiduous frequentation of a painter such as Corrado Cagli, theorist of the ‘primordial’ in the 1930s. Villa had already composed pieces for Cagli’s 1950 work on the Tarocchi.

Several recent studies of Cagli5 trace the derivation of his primordial poetics to that of Giorgio de Chirico (taken in turn from Nietzsche) and transmitted to Cagli by Massimo Bontempelli. They also state that Cagli (responsible for the reworking of the concept of primordiality) was excluded from the one and only show in January 1951 of the Gruppo Origine (Ballocco, Burri, Capogrossi, Colla) which was immediately disbanded, with the resulting temporary break in the friendship between Cagli and Capogrossi, as reported

by Ballocco himself.

The fellowships of Villa and Cagli and later of Villa and Burri can be held responsible for the poet having provided more than one stimulus of encouragement to the action undertaken by Burri in his palingenetic speculation. This started with the stripping off of his own existential condition and the radical determination to address it by resorting to the tabula rasa of an art derived from its own objective material destitution, which was at the same time an unassailable ethical value. Moreover, the conditions of artists such as

1

Colla and Capogrossi do not appear to be very different from the situation of Burri at that time, and one could even add the older Lucio Fontana. In the post-war period all of them felt a similar urgency to recalibrate their art through equally radical new departures.

Starting from the moment he abandoned figuration, and hence from the Catrami [Tars], 1948, to the Sacchi [Sacks], 1949-50 (fig. 1), Burri’s work signalled a primordium generating poetic tension that relies on a plain and simple self-referential étant donné, devoid of concern for the gratification of any exterior agent. This was concentrated on the inalienable principles of his own identity, memory and consciousness, the desire to subvert existential conditions and the assertion of his own imaginative fire.

The concern with composition and the conceptual rigour of form, space and equilibrium that governed his works from the very start are so evident and weighty as to indicate objectives very different from those that have been suggested, the alleged metaphors of the “wound’”, of blood and surgical practice, for instance, hypothesised as reminiscences of his past profession as a doctor and as a consequence of the trauma suffered by the artist during the years of war and imprisonment, or other sophisticated but unreliable analyses reductive of a full awareness of his artistic activity. As I see it, Burri’s painting proves to be the result of the conscious elaboration of a lucid poetic tension and a precision, declared by the artist himself to be “infallible”, apropos the objective to revolutionise the pictorial tradition of which – from a certain point of his life onwards – he identified himself as a historic depositary.

Such an undertaking was the meditated process of a tenacious conscience that never yielded, but complied without hesitation with the obligations that a steadfast conviction in the conceptual nature of art demanded from one of its greatest exponents.

Burri’s ethics To gain an understanding of what Burri’s work meant in that early post-war period, we have only to read the words of Salvatore Scarpitta, an artist emblematic of the experiences taking place between Europe (particularly Italy) and the USA, decanting and drawing inspiration and new ideas from the differences that were manifest on the two continents: “[…] My story is not aesthetic, it is about the quest for content […] mine is an individual journey. Do you know what Burri did? He established a dignity that set an example for us. We didn’t even have to look at his paintings, because he offered moral support at a time when many painters were seduced by abstract expressionism, and one has to admit that, without the moral example of that man there, life would not have been possible. The ethics that he brought to Italian art were far superior to anything else.”6 Very little has been said about this quality, despite Scarpitta highlighting the important role played by Burri during the post-war period. Moreover, there has been insufficient exploration of the importance of artistic ethics at the time and subsequently in relation to the production of Burri and other artists. However, the weight of that dignity, which is apparent in Burri’s work and in his refusal to make poetic and behavioural compromises, must have penetrated deeply given that artists such as Fontana, and later Jannis Kounellis, Fabio Mauri and others, never failed to remark upon it. Kounellis wrote: “During my training the works of Burri and Fontana played a primordial role, as did the work of many other artists of that generation who focused their research on matter.”7 On another

19

Burri: primordia and origins

NOTE In the present text the abbreviation (cat.) followed by a number indicates the reference number of Burri’s works in the Catalogo generale, edited by Bruno Corà, published by the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri in 2015.

18

Twenty-five years after the death of Alberto Burri, a revolutionary master of twentiethcentury and contemporary painting, one might almost say that his art has no need of further interpretations. There have been so many, during his life and afterwards, and the biographies and exegeses concerning him are full of them. They include precocious, masterful and pondered essays and articles by James Johnson Sweeney, Giulio Carlo Argan, Francesco Arcangeli, Maurizio Calvesi, Enrico Crispolti, Cesare Brandi and, most recently, Emily Braun. Nevertheless, the contribution that for me still carries the palm for unsurpassed efficacy is that of the several exertions of Emilio Villa, from the very start and thereafter.

Surfacing intact in Villa’s pages are intuitions and illuminations that are not only poetic – which would in themselves be enough to attribute to him, over and over, admiring recognition – but also nuggets of hermeneutic force and felicity that call for a reappraisal of the aspects and arguments of his divinatory critical activity. Here I refer in particular to his first contributions, dating to the early 1950s, in which I find an indication of Burri’s poetics that triggers an interesting way into the artistic directions he took in the years following his debut in Rome. At the conclusion of an early article, Villa stated that Burri’s is a “superior initiative […] of cellular decomposition of the original void, the cosmic void […] a palingenetic visitation” (1951),2 and hence a work aimed at a new origin. In a later article he emphasised: “Our cast-off elegiac, dumbfounded, composite cosmogony, epic in snapshots, everyday tragedies, rhapsodic miniature of the great formations of time […].

In the memory of the dwellings on piles there’s much to become the matter of a brief and troubled painting surface, a painting in a manner of speaking and, on the other hand, of any other action performed to reveal specific and irrefutable meanings. Alberto Burri cultivates as if in vitro, or rather as if in linen, these contractile anatomies of unexpressed organisms, wavering between a semblance of redundant biological materials and an ideal of fulminous universes from gigantic to minimal. A gaping ambiguity, a desire to embrace the memory of things that have to be clarified; a plaintive cosmogony conjectured with the mere innocence of nondescript materials: the rejected neighbourhood rags, tacky paints, amorphous pastes in a state between decay and crystallisation, cast-off timbers destined to water or fire, tarmac and mucilage. A world of run-of-the mill waste can become analogous and congenial to those with mightiest imagination. In any corner of the world a lively and disinterested eye such as that which fires the vision of Alberto Burri can surprise and draw forth the surge originating from higher realms where breathes the precise meaning of our secular and popular epic” (1952).3 In the conclusion to this second text Villa leaves no doubt about the dimension to which he believes Burri has directed his artistic action: “I recall Burri’s great invention: the opaque, after all the daring opacity, fished from the bottom of the other colours and formed into highly expressive concretions: the existence of the world in its purity turned almost into elegance, lightness conceived within matter, before unification and before separation…” 4 We should also recall that, while Villa was in Brazil between 1951 and 1952, working for the MASP (Museo d’Arte di São Paulo), he devoted himself avidly to the culture of prehistoric man. Nor should we overlook what I see as a little-explored but significant aspect of Villa’s interest in the ‘primordial’, along with his assiduous frequentation of a painter such as Corrado Cagli, theorist of the ‘primordial’ in the 1930s. Villa had already composed pieces for Cagli’s 1950 work on the Tarocchi.

Several recent studies of Cagli5 trace the derivation of his primordial poetics to that of Giorgio de Chirico (taken in turn from Nietzsche) and transmitted to Cagli by Massimo Bontempelli. They also state that Cagli (responsible for the reworking of the concept of primordiality) was excluded from the one and only show in January 1951 of the Gruppo Origine (Ballocco, Burri, Capogrossi, Colla) which was immediately disbanded, with the resulting temporary break in the friendship between Cagli and Capogrossi, as reported

by Ballocco himself.

The fellowships of Villa and Cagli and later of Villa and Burri can be held responsible for the poet having provided more than one stimulus of encouragement to the action undertaken by Burri in his palingenetic speculation. This started with the stripping off of his own existential condition and the radical determination to address it by resorting to the tabula rasa of an art derived from its own objective material destitution, which was at the same time an unassailable ethical value. Moreover, the conditions of artists such as

1

Colla and Capogrossi do not appear to be very different from the situation of Burri at that time, and one could even add the older Lucio Fontana. In the post-war period all of them felt a similar urgency to recalibrate their art through equally radical new departures.

Starting from the moment he abandoned figuration, and hence from the Catrami [Tars], 1948, to the Sacchi [Sacks], 1949-50 (fig. 1), Burri’s work signalled a primordium generating poetic tension that relies on a plain and simple self-referential étant donné, devoid of concern for the gratification of any exterior agent. This was concentrated on the inalienable principles of his own identity, memory and consciousness, the desire to subvert existential conditions and the assertion of his own imaginative fire.

The concern with composition and the conceptual rigour of form, space and equilibrium that governed his works from the very start are so evident and weighty as to indicate objectives very different from those that have been suggested, the alleged metaphors of the “wound’”, of blood and surgical practice, for instance, hypothesised as reminiscences of his past profession as a doctor and as a consequence of the trauma suffered by the artist during the years of war and imprisonment, or other sophisticated but unreliable analyses reductive of a full awareness of his artistic activity. As I see it, Burri’s painting proves to be the result of the conscious elaboration of a lucid poetic tension and a precision, declared by the artist himself to be “infallible”, apropos the objective to revolutionise the pictorial tradition of which – from a certain point of his life onwards – he identified himself as a historic depositary.

Such an undertaking was the meditated process of a tenacious conscience that never yielded, but complied without hesitation with the obligations that a steadfast conviction in the conceptual nature of art demanded from one of its greatest exponents.

Burri’s ethics To gain an understanding of what Burri’s work meant in that early post-war period, we have only to read the words of Salvatore Scarpitta, an artist emblematic of the experiences taking place between Europe (particularly Italy) and the USA, decanting and drawing inspiration and new ideas from the differences that were manifest on the two continents: “[…] My story is not aesthetic, it is about the quest for content […] mine is an individual journey. Do you know what Burri did? He established a dignity that set an example for us. We didn’t even have to look at his paintings, because he offered moral support at a time when many painters were seduced by abstract expressionism, and one has to admit that, without the moral example of that man there, life would not have been possible. The ethics that he brought to Italian art were far superior to anything else.”6 Very little has been said about this quality, despite Scarpitta highlighting the important role played by Burri during the post-war period. Moreover, there has been insufficient exploration of the importance of artistic ethics at the time and subsequently in relation to the production of Burri and other artists. However, the weight of that dignity, which is apparent in Burri’s work and in his refusal to make poetic and behavioural compromises, must have penetrated deeply given that artists such as Fontana, and later Jannis Kounellis, Fabio Mauri and others, never failed to remark upon it. Kounellis wrote: “During my training the works of Burri and Fontana played a primordial role, as did the work of many other artists of that generation who focused their research on matter.”7 On another

19

2

3

occasion, answering an interview question about the influence of Burri’s work, Kounellis stated: “Burri seemed to me a fascinating figure, a very open person for that time. His work introduced me to the problematics of Italian art: its origins and its contradictions.

Burri opened up the Italian situation for me and an entire series of fundamental ideas […] certainly at that time these two artists [Burri and Fontana] represented something radical.”8 Then, confirming Scarpitta’s opinion, Kounellis too declared: “I think that an artist is always an ethical figure.”9 Likewise, in an essay devoted to the “wretchedness” of the 1950s-1960s, Fabio Mauri emphasised the role played by Burri: “When it comes to ‘wretchedness’ Burri is truly regal. He founds, but immediately distances himself from every category that he initiates.

Why is he the greatest? It may be that he is the only one. Indeed, that is certainly the case as far as his power is concerned. However, above all (this is what I want to say) he was the ‘first’. He was the first to reuse the world’s waste as ‘techne’ in the early 1950s.

Reuse. As in every innovative tradition, using the world’s materials has its antecedents: Man Ray, Duchamp… However, in Burri the ‘collage’ is not ‘another counter-painting’, but the painting itself, that produced by the fateful brush […]. Burri tells us that experimental language is the classic attitude of language. In fact, the defeat of the world (medicine, a war participated in and lost) does not become ‘his’ destiny […]. As the neo-primitive representative of an intrinsic decomposition (a ‘deposition’ of the nature of things, including man), he recomposes an elevated and highly stable design on the world’s rags.

Every ‘American’ experience of wretchedness is daunted by a formal – perhaps European, albeit ancient and traditionally Italian – belief in the composition of everything from nothing. In this sense […]. Burri is the foundation of the ‘wretched’ of every kind. He is the king of the wretchedness that makes up the world. The one and only king […]. But Burri is Burri. Without compassion he rescues the species of ‘painting’ from the end of the world […]. His kind, rather than classical, is dogmatically experimental. I do not believe I am so alone in deeming him to be the indispensable father (he who doesn’t talk, but does) of all the new ‘wretches’ of the international avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s.

Right up, as is easily verified, to the 1980s […].”10 In Burri’s painting the ethical problem appears to be a premise inseparable from a radical experience that reconsiders painting ab origine, basing the action on transforming the “world’s waste” and in any case its universal manifestation: matter. This makes it necessary, and expedient, to define the spatiality conceived by Burri and observe once again, in particular, the principles and methods used in considering experiments on it as they were “presented” by him, from life and from truth.

After Caravaggio’s painted evocation of the scene showing the apostle Thomas placing his finger in the wound in Christ’s side, Burri reformulated the drama, this time without the metaphor, by “presenting” a real material on which to perform a similar experiment.

Apropos of this, before going further in the reflection on the spatiality conceived by Burri, it is to purpose to explore an episode that enshrines the encounter and, we might say, the mutual appreciation and poetic understanding between Fontana and Burri. Fontana had been working for several years on the conception of a pictorial and plastic spatiality on a cosmic scale, firstly in his Manifiesto blanco [White Manifesto], 1946, and then in his Concetti spaziali [Spatial Concepts] referred to as “buchi”, or holes, 1949. During the

20

26th Venice Biennale in 1952, where Burri’s work was shown for the first time, albeit just two pieces in the “Black and White – Drawing” section, Disegno per Rattoppo [Drawing for Patch] (fig. 2) and Studio per lo Strappo [Study for the Rip] (fig. 3) both dated 1952 (necessarily works on paper, necessarily replacing two similar canvases), Fontana was drawn to Studio per lo Strappo and purchased it, providing Burri with great encouragement despite not having met him yet in person. The reasons for Fontana’s interest in this work

by Burri, a substitute for one of his canvases in which the “rip” actually existed in the middle of the work, are clear. During a conversation with Carla Lonzi, a year before his death, Fontana said: “[…] from an ordinary gesture you can tell if that young man there is destined to do something. I […] don’t know, I don’t want to give myself airs […] but I’ve always had this kind of intuition […] from Yves Klein to Arman, Tinguely and Soto, they’re all in my collection, even Burri himself, I bought the first painting he ever sold at the Venice Biennale.”11 So it was Fontana, himself an artist, who recognised Burri as an artistic personality of the first order, destined to influence – albeit in a different way – the artistic processes that Fontana himself had been working on for some time with the subversive innovation of a spatiality obtained by breaking the rules of the support, or using neon light in flowing scrolls and arabesques in “environments” that he had described as “spatial” since 1949.

Following Burri’s debut in 1947-49, the first courageous critical reviews by Christian Zervos (1950), Lorenza Trucchi (1952) and Emilio Villa (1953) were quick to come, without overlooking Milton Gendel’s great piece in Art News in December 1954. However, there is no doubt that the message sent by Fontana to the young Burri in 1952 must have been extremely encouraging. Fontana was right and, most importantly, he had understood “the freedom of conceiving art through any medium, through any form, since art is not simply painting and sculpture: art is a human creation that can be transformed into anything…”12 What Fontana had glimpsed with such foresight was in effect already daily fare for Burri in the way he processed matter to create a new form and, above all, a new temperature and object in space.

Matter, form and space: from the Catrami [Tars] to the Ferri [Irons] Having been subjected, despite his proud temperament, to humiliation and deprivation due to his status as “loser” in the aftermath of the unprecedented tragedy of the Second World War, the consciousness of a young painter such as Burri led him to identify a particular Weltanschauung, a worldview that would allow him to conceive an appropriate language for visualising and expressing the unutterable dramas and feelings experienced and the equally necessary reasons for resuming life, demonstrating – as part of a continuous challenge implemented through art – how inexpressible are the processes of thought and imagination that pervade our minds.

Burri had an aptitude for the challenge and the unexpected, just as he had pride, ethical tension, an inclination for composition, an innate sense of geometry and a facility in the use of all the materials available to him (probably as a result of the Robinson Crusoestyle of life he endured in the prison camp). Lastly, he had a desire to stun and amaze through art, transforming any material to achieve an absolute form and an innovative space. These were the guiding qualities and objectives of the painter destined to have such a strong influence on the sensibilities of the production of painting and sculpture in the art scene from the post-war period onwards, providing it with unprecedented new openings and paths for exploration.

Fontana’s work, with its “holes” and later its “cuts”, invented the conceptual coordinates of a spatiality that sees the void as a dimension in which to locate the moulding of thought (a dimension the Gutai Group discovered in its Taoist tradition during the postwar period). Burri, by flaunting matter in painting, succeeded in overturning all previous representational values, instead presenting form in the register of an intuitive but absolute spatial balance.

What was at stake was redemption from all conditions requiring submission, restrictions on freedom and inhibitions that may be imposed on an open mind. At stake was the possibility to access and even conceive a new level of space, form and beauty that reestablished all the parameters of a different anthropological approach following the fall, the loss and the drift suffered. This challenge and wager underlay a protest that was mute, yet no less present when it was voiced by an image that Burri composed with a

21

2

3

occasion, answering an interview question about the influence of Burri’s work, Kounellis stated: “Burri seemed to me a fascinating figure, a very open person for that time. His work introduced me to the problematics of Italian art: its origins and its contradictions.

Burri opened up the Italian situation for me and an entire series of fundamental ideas […] certainly at that time these two artists [Burri and Fontana] represented something radical.”8 Then, confirming Scarpitta’s opinion, Kounellis too declared: “I think that an artist is always an ethical figure.”9 Likewise, in an essay devoted to the “wretchedness” of the 1950s-1960s, Fabio Mauri emphasised the role played by Burri: “When it comes to ‘wretchedness’ Burri is truly regal. He founds, but immediately distances himself from every category that he initiates.

Why is he the greatest? It may be that he is the only one. Indeed, that is certainly the case as far as his power is concerned. However, above all (this is what I want to say) he was the ‘first’. He was the first to reuse the world’s waste as ‘techne’ in the early 1950s.

Reuse. As in every innovative tradition, using the world’s materials has its antecedents: Man Ray, Duchamp… However, in Burri the ‘collage’ is not ‘another counter-painting’, but the painting itself, that produced by the fateful brush […]. Burri tells us that experimental language is the classic attitude of language. In fact, the defeat of the world (medicine, a war participated in and lost) does not become ‘his’ destiny […]. As the neo-primitive representative of an intrinsic decomposition (a ‘deposition’ of the nature of things, including man), he recomposes an elevated and highly stable design on the world’s rags.

Every ‘American’ experience of wretchedness is daunted by a formal – perhaps European, albeit ancient and traditionally Italian – belief in the composition of everything from nothing. In this sense […]. Burri is the foundation of the ‘wretched’ of every kind. He is the king of the wretchedness that makes up the world. The one and only king […]. But Burri is Burri. Without compassion he rescues the species of ‘painting’ from the end of the world […]. His kind, rather than classical, is dogmatically experimental. I do not believe I am so alone in deeming him to be the indispensable father (he who doesn’t talk, but does) of all the new ‘wretches’ of the international avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s.

Right up, as is easily verified, to the 1980s […].”10 In Burri’s painting the ethical problem appears to be a premise inseparable from a radical experience that reconsiders painting ab origine, basing the action on transforming the “world’s waste” and in any case its universal manifestation: matter. This makes it necessary, and expedient, to define the spatiality conceived by Burri and observe once again, in particular, the principles and methods used in considering experiments on it as they were “presented” by him, from life and from truth.

After Caravaggio’s painted evocation of the scene showing the apostle Thomas placing his finger in the wound in Christ’s side, Burri reformulated the drama, this time without the metaphor, by “presenting” a real material on which to perform a similar experiment.

Apropos of this, before going further in the reflection on the spatiality conceived by Burri, it is to purpose to explore an episode that enshrines the encounter and, we might say, the mutual appreciation and poetic understanding between Fontana and Burri. Fontana had been working for several years on the conception of a pictorial and plastic spatiality on a cosmic scale, firstly in his Manifiesto blanco [White Manifesto], 1946, and then in his Concetti spaziali [Spatial Concepts] referred to as “buchi”, or holes, 1949. During the

20

26th Venice Biennale in 1952, where Burri’s work was shown for the first time, albeit just two pieces in the “Black and White – Drawing” section, Disegno per Rattoppo [Drawing for Patch] (fig. 2) and Studio per lo Strappo [Study for the Rip] (fig. 3) both dated 1952 (necessarily works on paper, necessarily replacing two similar canvases), Fontana was drawn to Studio per lo Strappo and purchased it, providing Burri with great encouragement despite not having met him yet in person. The reasons for Fontana’s interest in this work

by Burri, a substitute for one of his canvases in which the “rip” actually existed in the middle of the work, are clear. During a conversation with Carla Lonzi, a year before his death, Fontana said: “[…] from an ordinary gesture you can tell if that young man there is destined to do something. I […] don’t know, I don’t want to give myself airs […] but I’ve always had this kind of intuition […] from Yves Klein to Arman, Tinguely and Soto, they’re all in my collection, even Burri himself, I bought the first painting he ever sold at the Venice Biennale.”11 So it was Fontana, himself an artist, who recognised Burri as an artistic personality of the first order, destined to influence – albeit in a different way – the artistic processes that Fontana himself had been working on for some time with the subversive innovation of a spatiality obtained by breaking the rules of the support, or using neon light in flowing scrolls and arabesques in “environments” that he had described as “spatial” since 1949.

Following Burri’s debut in 1947-49, the first courageous critical reviews by Christian Zervos (1950), Lorenza Trucchi (1952) and Emilio Villa (1953) were quick to come, without overlooking Milton Gendel’s great piece in Art News in December 1954. However, there is no doubt that the message sent by Fontana to the young Burri in 1952 must have been extremely encouraging. Fontana was right and, most importantly, he had understood “the freedom of conceiving art through any medium, through any form, since art is not simply painting and sculpture: art is a human creation that can be transformed into anything…”12 What Fontana had glimpsed with such foresight was in effect already daily fare for Burri in the way he processed matter to create a new form and, above all, a new temperature and object in space.

Matter, form and space: from the Catrami [Tars] to the Ferri [Irons] Having been subjected, despite his proud temperament, to humiliation and deprivation due to his status as “loser” in the aftermath of the unprecedented tragedy of the Second World War, the consciousness of a young painter such as Burri led him to identify a particular Weltanschauung, a worldview that would allow him to conceive an appropriate language for visualising and expressing the unutterable dramas and feelings experienced and the equally necessary reasons for resuming life, demonstrating – as part of a continuous challenge implemented through art – how inexpressible are the processes of thought and imagination that pervade our minds.

Burri had an aptitude for the challenge and the unexpected, just as he had pride, ethical tension, an inclination for composition, an innate sense of geometry and a facility in the use of all the materials available to him (probably as a result of the Robinson Crusoestyle of life he endured in the prison camp). Lastly, he had a desire to stun and amaze through art, transforming any material to achieve an absolute form and an innovative space. These were the guiding qualities and objectives of the painter destined to have such a strong influence on the sensibilities of the production of painting and sculpture in the art scene from the post-war period onwards, providing it with unprecedented new openings and paths for exploration.

Fontana’s work, with its “holes” and later its “cuts”, invented the conceptual coordinates of a spatiality that sees the void as a dimension in which to locate the moulding of thought (a dimension the Gutai Group discovered in its Taoist tradition during the postwar period). Burri, by flaunting matter in painting, succeeded in overturning all previous representational values, instead presenting form in the register of an intuitive but absolute spatial balance.

What was at stake was redemption from all conditions requiring submission, restrictions on freedom and inhibitions that may be imposed on an open mind. At stake was the possibility to access and even conceive a new level of space, form and beauty that reestablished all the parameters of a different anthropological approach following the fall, the loss and the drift suffered. This challenge and wager underlay a protest that was mute, yet no less present when it was voiced by an image that Burri composed with a

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determination that verged on the brutality of a scream, certainly lacking any aesthetic filter that would attenuate the impact on the consciousness of those viewing his works.

Between the oil on canvas entitled Texas, 1945 (fig. 4; cat. 1) and the Studio per lo Strappo, 1952 (cat. 291), purchased by Fontana in October of that year at the Venice Biennale, an epiphany took place regarding the role of matter in Burri’s paintings. From 1948 to 1951 the appearance and development of the Catrami [Tars], from 1950 to 1951 the Muffe [Moulds] (fig. 5; cat. 134) and, as early as 1949, the introduction of his Sacchi [Sacks] in the collage composition of certain oil paintings, particularly in the Composizione [Composition], 1949 (fig. 6; cat. 58) in oil, acrylic and sacking on canvas, and in SZ1, 1949 (fig. 7; cat. 182) in oil and sacking on canvas. This work, as well as flaunting fragments of the American flag, also bears legends in capital letters indicating the Allied aid allotted to European countries, and particularly Italy, in the immediate post-war period as set forth in the Marshall Plan. These works form the framework of a new concept of creating pictorial space, accompanying painting with matter, plain and simple, or often actually using it to replace the paint.

Burri’s first Sacco, 1950 (cat. 181), with its accomplished and resolute image that even includes pumice stone (already amply used by Burri), as well as paper, oil and an array of stitches and patches, was followed by Gobbo [Humpback], 1950 (fig. 8; cat. 184), numerous Bianchi [Whites] and Rossi [Reds], including Rosso [Red], 1950 (cat. 186), Sabbia [Sand], 1952 (fig. 9; cat. 185), Rosso Nero [Red Black] (fig. 10; cat. 233) as well as Grande Bianco [Large White], 1952 (fig. 11, pl. pp. 86-87; cat. 200), Grande Sacco [Large Sack], 1952 (fig. 12, pl. pp. 84-85; cat. 212) and Bianco [White], 1952 (fig. 13; cat. 267), now in the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin. As we know, three of these works (fig. 11, pl. pp. 86- 87; fig. 12, pl. pp. 84-85 and fig. 14 (formerly Modugno collection, now Valsecchi collection) were seen by Robert Rauschenberg when he stayed in Rome in 1953, during his visit to Italy while working on his Scatole e feticci personali [Boxes and Personal Fetishes] exhibition in March 1953 at the Galleria L’Obelisco, directed

by Irene Brin and Gaspero Del Corso. They made a vivid impression on him that resulted, in 1954, in the start of his Combines, as noted by Charles F. Stuckey in the catalogue accompanying the Rauschenberg retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1997-1998. It was also appropriately recalled by Emily Braun in her detailed and welldocumented essay in the catalogue for the Burri retrospective The Trauma of Painting, held at the Guggenheim Museum in 2015. She returned to the subject and extended it to Cy Twombly in relation to his use of the ‘white’ employed by Burri extensively in ways that aroused the interest of Twombly, who settled in Rome after visiting the city again following his joint visit with Rauschenberg in 1953.

Despite his diligence in the use of matter, having obtained the same expressive power and matching linguistic outcomes from different materials, Burri never exalted matter as such, as the end to which his poetics could be ascribed. Instead, he saw it as the element with which to achieve a quality of space and a form that he unhesitantly defined as “unbalanced balance”, to the point of endorsing its essence in the image.

As a result, the succession of different materials used in the making of his works over time signified his interest in each of them, but also his abandonment of one material in favour of another when that type of relationship came to an end, losing its allure and intensity of feeling. Once again, this demonstrates that while matter played a central role in making, it was always at the service of an idea of space that redeemed its congenital inertia and gravity through skilful acts of formalisation. This interpretation emerges

11

12

clearly when, in the mid-1950s, having conceived and developed some of the most important phases of his experimentation with materials such as tar, pumice stone, vinavil glue, sacking, gold, celotex fibreboard, sawdust, fabric, rope, sand, tow, silvery purpurin, plaster and oil, Burri decided to use fire during the creation of the work, with a drastic effect on its substance and image.

While wishing to avoid mention of any symbolic, anthropological, ritual magic and phenomenological dimensions, there is no doubt that Burri’s attack with fire on his various materials introduced a dramatic, poetic element, with an explosive force and results destined to effect both his own work and, subsequently, that of other artists.

In a slow but constant crescendo, combustion is present from as early as 1951-1952 in works such as Senza titolo [Untitled], 1951 (fig. 15; cat. 159), Dittico [Diptych], 1952 (fig. 16; cat. 135) and Bianco, 1952 (fig. 17; cat. 158), then in 1953 with Rosso [Red], 1953 (fig. 18; cat. 302), and in the numerous works on paper of the Pagine [Pages], 1953-1954, created for independently published books (Alberto Burri, Emilio Villa, 17 variazioni su temi proposti per una pura ideologia fonetica [17 Variations on Topics Proposed for a Pure Phonetic Ideology], Città di Castello 1955). It was then used more pervasively from 1954-1956 in works such as Tutto Nero 2 T [All Black 2T], 1954 (fig. 19; cat. 508), Sacco [Sack], 1955 (fig. 20; cat. 497), Rosso e Sacco [Red and Sack], 1956 (fig. 21; cat. 536) and Nero con punti rossi [Black with Red Dots], 1956 (fig. 22; cat. 563), when he started using combustion in a clearly recognisable manner, through to the creation of authentic masterpieces when Burri turned this to wood and plastic.

Countless works deserve a mention in this field, as Burri used combustion for over twenty years, from 1951 to 1971, finally abandoning it with the invention of the Cretti [Cracks], which were already fully defined in 1971 (that is, excluding a few appearances in previous years). The Legni [Woods] with their sheets of veneer joined to form a serial structure, lacerated with craters and blackened, incinerated slits, and the Plastiche [Plastics] of another quality entirely, with different thicknesses and colours – primarily white, red and black and, after 1961, transparent – unfurl in a continuous operation carried out by Burri with the blowtorch in his hand, opening holes in the uniform surfaces and burning central areas and rims of unexplored territory.

Burri is faced with a new diaphragm, following on from tar, sacking and wood, through which to access shadows and phantasmagoria not unlike an archaic shaman performing against the backdrop of a Palaeolithic cave or a fifteenth-century fresco painter in front of his wall. Through matter, Burri found his habitual path for the same repeated artistic act. Like every great tragic poet engaged in the descent into hell, as diagnosed so early on for him by Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues, he passed through arduous cognitive stages and experiences the visionary narrative of which is transcribed in works that configure – in a space and time beyond history – the spiritual odyssey of a survivor returning from real historic catastrophes and the depths of the imagination.

Burri also forged his Ferri [Irons] (1958-1961) (pls. pp. 113, 117) in purifying fire, composing and welding events of rare poetic power like the “miglior fabbro”.13 They confront the viewer’s gaze with the pride of civilised forms that borrow their dimensions from early medieval workshops forging armour and helmets, as well as gold and silver altar frontals, arriving intact at the factories of our times. Fire, like painting, is difficult, perhaps impossible to define. As regards Burri, if we look at photos or films that portray him using the flame to open up the transparent surfaces of plastic, shaping it with his hands, we realise that such images (by Ugo Mulas and Aurelio Amendola)14 are invaluable

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determination that verged on the brutality of a scream, certainly lacking any aesthetic filter that would attenuate the impact on the consciousness of those viewing his works.

Between the oil on canvas entitled Texas, 1945 (fig. 4; cat. 1) and the Studio per lo Strappo, 1952 (cat. 291), purchased by Fontana in October of that year at the Venice Biennale, an epiphany took place regarding the role of matter in Burri’s paintings. From 1948 to 1951 the appearance and development of the Catrami [Tars], from 1950 to 1951 the Muffe [Moulds] (fig. 5; cat. 134) and, as early as 1949, the introduction of his Sacchi [Sacks] in the collage composition of certain oil paintings, particularly in the Composizione [Composition], 1949 (fig. 6; cat. 58) in oil, acrylic and sacking on canvas, and in SZ1, 1949 (fig. 7; cat. 182) in oil and sacking on canvas. This work, as well as flaunting fragments of the American flag, also bears legends in capital letters indicating the Allied aid allotted to European countries, and particularly Italy, in the immediate post-war period as set forth in the Marshall Plan. These works form the framework of a new concept of creating pictorial space, accompanying painting with matter, plain and simple, or often actually using it to replace the paint.

Burri’s first Sacco, 1950 (cat. 181), with its accomplished and resolute image that even includes pumice stone (already amply used by Burri), as well as paper, oil and an array of stitches and patches, was followed by Gobbo [Humpback], 1950 (fig. 8; cat. 184), numerous Bianchi [Whites] and Rossi [Reds], including Rosso [Red], 1950 (cat. 186), Sabbia [Sand], 1952 (fig. 9; cat. 185), Rosso Nero [Red Black] (fig. 10; cat. 233) as well as Grande Bianco [Large White], 1952 (fig. 11, pl. pp. 86-87; cat. 200), Grande Sacco [Large Sack], 1952 (fig. 12, pl. pp. 84-85; cat. 212) and Bianco [White], 1952 (fig. 13; cat. 267), now in the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin. As we know, three of these works (fig. 11, pl. pp. 86- 87; fig. 12, pl. pp. 84-85 and fig. 14 (formerly Modugno collection, now Valsecchi collection) were seen by Robert Rauschenberg when he stayed in Rome in 1953, during his visit to Italy while working on his Scatole e feticci personali [Boxes and Personal Fetishes] exhibition in March 1953 at the Galleria L’Obelisco, directed

by Irene Brin and Gaspero Del Corso. They made a vivid impression on him that resulted, in 1954, in the start of his Combines, as noted by Charles F. Stuckey in the catalogue accompanying the Rauschenberg retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1997-1998. It was also appropriately recalled by Emily Braun in her detailed and welldocumented essay in the catalogue for the Burri retrospective The Trauma of Painting, held at the Guggenheim Museum in 2015. She returned to the subject and extended it to Cy Twombly in relation to his use of the ‘white’ employed by Burri extensively in ways that aroused the interest of Twombly, who settled in Rome after visiting the city again following his joint visit with Rauschenberg in 1953.

Despite his diligence in the use of matter, having obtained the same expressive power and matching linguistic outcomes from different materials, Burri never exalted matter as such, as the end to which his poetics could be ascribed. Instead, he saw it as the element with which to achieve a quality of space and a form that he unhesitantly defined as “unbalanced balance”, to the point of endorsing its essence in the image.

As a result, the succession of different materials used in the making of his works over time signified his interest in each of them, but also his abandonment of one material in favour of another when that type of relationship came to an end, losing its allure and intensity of feeling. Once again, this demonstrates that while matter played a central role in making, it was always at the service of an idea of space that redeemed its congenital inertia and gravity through skilful acts of formalisation. This interpretation emerges

11

12

clearly when, in the mid-1950s, having conceived and developed some of the most important phases of his experimentation with materials such as tar, pumice stone, vinavil glue, sacking, gold, celotex fibreboard, sawdust, fabric, rope, sand, tow, silvery purpurin, plaster and oil, Burri decided to use fire during the creation of the work, with a drastic effect on its substance and image.

While wishing to avoid mention of any symbolic, anthropological, ritual magic and phenomenological dimensions, there is no doubt that Burri’s attack with fire on his various materials introduced a dramatic, poetic element, with an explosive force and results destined to effect both his own work and, subsequently, that of other artists.

In a slow but constant crescendo, combustion is present from as early as 1951-1952 in works such as Senza titolo [Untitled], 1951 (fig. 15; cat. 159), Dittico [Diptych], 1952 (fig. 16; cat. 135) and Bianco, 1952 (fig. 17; cat. 158), then in 1953 with Rosso [Red], 1953 (fig. 18; cat. 302), and in the numerous works on paper of the Pagine [Pages], 1953-1954, created for independently published books (Alberto Burri, Emilio Villa, 17 variazioni su temi proposti per una pura ideologia fonetica [17 Variations on Topics Proposed for a Pure Phonetic Ideology], Città di Castello 1955). It was then used more pervasively from 1954-1956 in works such as Tutto Nero 2 T [All Black 2T], 1954 (fig. 19; cat. 508), Sacco [Sack], 1955 (fig. 20; cat. 497), Rosso e Sacco [Red and Sack], 1956 (fig. 21; cat. 536) and Nero con punti rossi [Black with Red Dots], 1956 (fig. 22; cat. 563), when he started using combustion in a clearly recognisable manner, through to the creation of authentic masterpieces when Burri turned this to wood and plastic.

Countless works deserve a mention in this field, as Burri used combustion for over twenty years, from 1951 to 1971, finally abandoning it with the invention of the Cretti [Cracks], which were already fully defined in 1971 (that is, excluding a few appearances in previous years). The Legni [Woods] with their sheets of veneer joined to form a serial structure, lacerated with craters and blackened, incinerated slits, and the Plastiche [Plastics] of another quality entirely, with different thicknesses and colours – primarily white, red and black and, after 1961, transparent – unfurl in a continuous operation carried out by Burri with the blowtorch in his hand, opening holes in the uniform surfaces and burning central areas and rims of unexplored territory.

Burri is faced with a new diaphragm, following on from tar, sacking and wood, through which to access shadows and phantasmagoria not unlike an archaic shaman performing against the backdrop of a Palaeolithic cave or a fifteenth-century fresco painter in front of his wall. Through matter, Burri found his habitual path for the same repeated artistic act. Like every great tragic poet engaged in the descent into hell, as diagnosed so early on for him by Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues, he passed through arduous cognitive stages and experiences the visionary narrative of which is transcribed in works that configure – in a space and time beyond history – the spiritual odyssey of a survivor returning from real historic catastrophes and the depths of the imagination.

Burri also forged his Ferri [Irons] (1958-1961) (pls. pp. 113, 117) in purifying fire, composing and welding events of rare poetic power like the “miglior fabbro”.13 They confront the viewer’s gaze with the pride of civilised forms that borrow their dimensions from early medieval workshops forging armour and helmets, as well as gold and silver altar frontals, arriving intact at the factories of our times. Fire, like painting, is difficult, perhaps impossible to define. As regards Burri, if we look at photos or films that portray him using the flame to open up the transparent surfaces of plastic, shaping it with his hands, we realise that such images (by Ugo Mulas and Aurelio Amendola)14 are invaluable

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Aurelio Amendola, photo-portraits of Alberto Burri while working on a Combustione, Casenove di Morra, Città di Castello, 1976

in the thick dribbles of matter innumerable folds and heavy drapes of material folded back upon itself. These are instinctively obtained by Burri, guided by an innate sensitivity, so as to arouse an echo in our memory capable of awakening in each of us not only the pathos of hundreds of sacred ‘offerings’ of European painting from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries but also the most recent aesthetic considerations of Deleuze regarding the fold in Baroque art or those of Didi-Huberman on “fallen drapery.” 19 In those same years, Burri began working on an extensive new conception of plastic combustions, which requires further and separate consideration. Among them, in fact, we can distinguish the cycle of small plastic works made of thin sheets of colourless, transparent cellophane applied to supports of Masonite, celotex fibreboard or hardboard.

There is also the considerably more solemn and powerful group known as Bianco Plastica [White Plastic], produced between 1965 to 1968 and including authentic masterpieces, a selection of which were exhibited in Burri’s solo gallery at the 1966 Venice Biennale.

Among these works, this exhibition at the Fondazione Cini includes Bianco Plastica B6 [White Plastic B6], 1966, and Bianco B [White B], 1965, from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in Venice.

Despite various typical hitches and ritual polemics, including Burri’s refusal in advance of a possible Biennale Grand Prix, for which he explicitly put himself out of the running in writing, the event encountered a positive response. In the introduction to the catalogue, Vittorio Rubiu wrote: “On the surface, today Burri appears to be making different paintings, but the final result is still the same. These are large works where, on the slow accumulation of a white that enlarges and dilates vision, telluric blacks are deposited (or explode) […].

The black is the result, the trace of an action, a combustion, creating space because it destroys it: but the white puts it back together, assimilates it to its own quality, which is that of being above all neutral, obstinately and almost involuntarily expressive.”20 Fire and photography Underlying the creation of the Plastiche is the substance formed by molecules called artificial polymers, extracted mainly from oil and through the transformative medium of the flame. Over time, photography has made a significant contribution to the importance of Burri’s Plastiche, since it has immortalised his ritualistic gestures during their production. On a few rare occasions, Burri permitted a photographer to capture him in the process of burning the Plastiche. And it is indeed important to return to the use of fire, which deserves further reflection. Before Aurelio Amendola took his series of magical photographs of Burri at work, one must mention Ugo Mulas, now universally recognised as one of the greatest Italian photographers of the past century, who has become wellknown in the art scene in his own right. Mulas’s black and white photographs, portraying Burri through his transparent Plastiche as he is performing the combustions (I am referring to what is known of his body of work because it has been made public through exhibitions and publications), show how a certain distance was adopted in order to obtain a kind of artist-artwork effect, and to allow us to glimpse Burri’s figure and movements through the opaque screen of the plastic material between himself and the photographer.

More than Burri’s movement, what stands out is the desolation of the black strips of plastic, burned with a torch, hanging from the large holes made by the artist,

34

so that the manual workmanship takes on primary value in the viewer’s imagination.

Amendola’s photographs, on the other hand, are mostly in colour, and their effect is more spectacular and entirely different. The photographer from Pistoia had been welcomed

by Burri because he had already photographed Marino Marini, whom Burri held in high esteem, true of few other artists. During the first “sitting”, the meeting turned into a preliminary conversation. But later, in the isolated studio in Casenove, near Morra in the Apennine hills of the upper Tiber valley, Burri and Amendola met again face to face before a transparent sheet of plastic, ready to be worked upon, and Burri, with his small blue-flamed torch in hand, challenged the photographer to portray him in action. “Thank goodness I had brought my 2000-watt lamp and the colour film that would bring out the flame,” said Amendola, recalling the episode. He positioned himself opposite Burri, on the other side of the sheet of cellophane onto which the artist had begun directing his small blowtorch, which Burri held firmly in his hand and manoeuvred with rapid gestures. Amendola had already begun taking pictures, keeping the lens close enough to include just over half the body of the artist. Burri was wearing a brown velvet jacket and a red and blue checked woollen shirt. After the few seconds that it took for the flame to break through the plastic and flare up, Amendola had already achieved his masterpiece, taking a picture which continues to be emblematic of the entire series.

The image captures the shiny surface of transparent plastic traversed by flashes of light and – almost absorbed into the fragile support – the figure of Burri, from whose chest the fire seems to burst, covering and erasing his face while leaving visible the arms and hands in action. This is a rare shot, melding the fire and the artist’s body into a single image.

Burri himself claimed that it was the best photograph of him and it is easy to see why.

The fire which seems to emerge from his chest lends itself to immediate translation into a fitting emblem of the artist’s legendary courage and the unwavering tension that guided him throughout his life.

In other photographs taken that day and on other occasions, Amendola highlighted Burri’s methods in the realisation of his transparent plastic works and the very process of combustion. One can see clearly how the artist directed and controlled the blaze after the flame had impacted the surface of the plastic, blowing hard to divert and interrupt the tongues of fire, shaping the edges of the combustion with his bare hands and moulding the lacerations in line with a careful distribution of voids and unburnt sections traversed by bright, shimmering signs. Photograph after photograph, Amendola immortalised Burri blowing on the plastic and shaping its dark edges into large rings with his hand, framing an ethereal spatiality. What comes to everyone’s mind is the blowing of oxides onto the walls of the Franco-Cantabrian caves by our prehistoric ancestors and the ‘palingenetic visitation’ that Villa wrote of.

Ashes, air and breath We have so far looked at the production of the Plastiche with reference to fire and to the process of combustion (which differs from the burning of the Legni [Woods] or Carte [Papers]). However, we must still add considerations relating to the ashy matter produced by the scorching of the plastic, as well as the effect of Burri blowing on the flame, which are no less important than the manual moulding action on the liquefied plastic. It was

35

Aurelio Amendola, photo-portraits of Alberto Burri while working on a Combustione, Casenove di Morra, Città di Castello, 1976

in the thick dribbles of matter innumerable folds and heavy drapes of material folded back upon itself. These are instinctively obtained by Burri, guided by an innate sensitivity, so as to arouse an echo in our memory capable of awakening in each of us not only the pathos of hundreds of sacred ‘offerings’ of European painting from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries but also the most recent aesthetic considerations of Deleuze regarding the fold in Baroque art or those of Didi-Huberman on “fallen drapery.” 19 In those same years, Burri began working on an extensive new conception of plastic combustions, which requires further and separate consideration. Among them, in fact, we can distinguish the cycle of small plastic works made of thin sheets of colourless, transparent cellophane applied to supports of Masonite, celotex fibreboard or hardboard.

There is also the considerably more solemn and powerful group known as Bianco Plastica [White Plastic], produced between 1965 to 1968 and including authentic masterpieces, a selection of which were exhibited in Burri’s solo gallery at the 1966 Venice Biennale.

Among these works, this exhibition at the Fondazione Cini includes Bianco Plastica B6 [White Plastic B6], 1966, and Bianco B [White B], 1965, from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in Venice.

Despite various typical hitches and ritual polemics, including Burri’s refusal in advance of a possible Biennale Grand Prix, for which he explicitly put himself out of the running in writing, the event encountered a positive response. In the introduction to the catalogue, Vittorio Rubiu wrote: “On the surface, today Burri appears to be making different paintings, but the final result is still the same. These are large works where, on the slow accumulation of a white that enlarges and dilates vision, telluric blacks are deposited (or explode) […].

The black is the result, the trace of an action, a combustion, creating space because it destroys it: but the white puts it back together, assimilates it to its own quality, which is that of being above all neutral, obstinately and almost involuntarily expressive.”20 Fire and photography Underlying the creation of the Plastiche is the substance formed by molecules called artificial polymers, extracted mainly from oil and through the transformative medium of the flame. Over time, photography has made a significant contribution to the importance of Burri’s Plastiche, since it has immortalised his ritualistic gestures during their production. On a few rare occasions, Burri permitted a photographer to capture him in the process of burning the Plastiche. And it is indeed important to return to the use of fire, which deserves further reflection. Before Aurelio Amendola took his series of magical photographs of Burri at work, one must mention Ugo Mulas, now universally recognised as one of the greatest Italian photographers of the past century, who has become wellknown in the art scene in his own right. Mulas’s black and white photographs, portraying Burri through his transparent Plastiche as he is performing the combustions (I am referring to what is known of his body of work because it has been made public through exhibitions and publications), show how a certain distance was adopted in order to obtain a kind of artist-artwork effect, and to allow us to glimpse Burri’s figure and movements through the opaque screen of the plastic material between himself and the photographer.

More than Burri’s movement, what stands out is the desolation of the black strips of plastic, burned with a torch, hanging from the large holes made by the artist,

34

so that the manual workmanship takes on primary value in the viewer’s imagination.

Amendola’s photographs, on the other hand, are mostly in colour, and their effect is more spectacular and entirely different. The photographer from Pistoia had been welcomed

by Burri because he had already photographed Marino Marini, whom Burri held in high esteem, true of few other artists. During the first “sitting”, the meeting turned into a preliminary conversation. But later, in the isolated studio in Casenove, near Morra in the Apennine hills of the upper Tiber valley, Burri and Amendola met again face to face before a transparent sheet of plastic, ready to be worked upon, and Burri, with his small blue-flamed torch in hand, challenged the photographer to portray him in action. “Thank goodness I had brought my 2000-watt lamp and the colour film that would bring out the flame,” said Amendola, recalling the episode. He positioned himself opposite Burri, on the other side of the sheet of cellophane onto which the artist had begun directing his small blowtorch, which Burri held firmly in his hand and manoeuvred with rapid gestures. Amendola had already begun taking pictures, keeping the lens close enough to include just over half the body of the artist. Burri was wearing a brown velvet jacket and a red and blue checked woollen shirt. After the few seconds that it took for the flame to break through the plastic and flare up, Amendola had already achieved his masterpiece, taking a picture which continues to be emblematic of the entire series.

The image captures the shiny surface of transparent plastic traversed by flashes of light and – almost absorbed into the fragile support – the figure of Burri, from whose chest the fire seems to burst, covering and erasing his face while leaving visible the arms and hands in action. This is a rare shot, melding the fire and the artist’s body into a single image.

Burri himself claimed that it was the best photograph of him and it is easy to see why.

The fire which seems to emerge from his chest lends itself to immediate translation into a fitting emblem of the artist’s legendary courage and the unwavering tension that guided him throughout his life.

In other photographs taken that day and on other occasions, Amendola highlighted Burri’s methods in the realisation of his transparent plastic works and the very process of combustion. One can see clearly how the artist directed and controlled the blaze after the flame had impacted the surface of the plastic, blowing hard to divert and interrupt the tongues of fire, shaping the edges of the combustion with his bare hands and moulding the lacerations in line with a careful distribution of voids and unburnt sections traversed by bright, shimmering signs. Photograph after photograph, Amendola immortalised Burri blowing on the plastic and shaping its dark edges into large rings with his hand, framing an ethereal spatiality. What comes to everyone’s mind is the blowing of oxides onto the walls of the Franco-Cantabrian caves by our prehistoric ancestors and the ‘palingenetic visitation’ that Villa wrote of.

Ashes, air and breath We have so far looked at the production of the Plastiche with reference to fire and to the process of combustion (which differs from the burning of the Legni [Woods] or Carte [Papers]). However, we must still add considerations relating to the ashy matter produced by the scorching of the plastic, as well as the effect of Burri blowing on the flame, which are no less important than the manual moulding action on the liquefied plastic. It was

35

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The Grande Cretto of Gibellina Luca Massimo Barbero

Di queste case non è rimasto che qualche brandello di muro Di tanti che mi corrispondevano non è rimasto neppure tanto Ma nel cuore nessuna croce manca È il mio cuore il paese più straziato.

Giuseppe Ungaretti, San Martino del Carso, 1916 – Of these homes / nothing is left / but a few / fragments of wall / Of the countless others / who were close to me / not even that much / remains / But in my heart / no cross is lacking / My heart is the most / ravaged of terrains.

Grande Cretto Gibellina (detail), 2012

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The Grande Cretto of Gibellina Luca Massimo Barbero

Di queste case non è rimasto che qualche brandello di muro Di tanti che mi corrispondevano non è rimasto neppure tanto Ma nel cuore nessuna croce manca È il mio cuore il paese più straziato.

Giuseppe Ungaretti, San Martino del Carso, 1916 – Of these homes / nothing is left / but a few / fragments of wall / Of the countless others / who were close to me / not even that much / remains / But in my heart / no cross is lacking / My heart is the most / ravaged of terrains.

Grande Cretto Gibellina (detail), 2012

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63

I have chosen to open with Ungaretti, a poet dear to Alberto Burri, because of their shared sense of pathos in the face of ruins, symbol of tragedy and destruction: for Ungaretti, it was the remains of a village in Friuli, destroyed by bombing; for Burri, it was his encounter with old Gibellina, destroyed by the Belice earthquake.

The sad story is well-known: in January 1968, two tremors within the space of twentyfour hours razed the town of Gibellina, causing more than a hundred casualties and leaving a thousand survivors homeless. The local government decided to abandon the town and build a new one some twenty kilometres away, closer to the highway. In order to compensate for the eradication of the town’s history, the new Gibellina was to be ‘ennobled’ by the presence of numbers of works of art, because, “art is not superfluous,”1 as declared in the title of a long article by Ludovico Corrao, the visionary mayor of the valley of Belice, in 1979. Art was to restore identity to the town, which otherwise risked a “complete loss of identity that might make it seem like the suburb of any random city.

From this comes the necessity for an anchor to our own historical and cultural roots.

The first problem we tackled was to recover as much as possible that preserved the memory of the old, destroyed town in order to retain not a shrine but a remembrance, as a source to which we can refer back.”2 At the outset Corrao’s focus was on Gibellina Nuova, to which he invited Ignazio Moncada, Carmelo Cappello, Turi Simeti, Paolo Schiavocampo, Emilio Isgrò, Rosario Bruno, Carla Accardi, Nino Franchina, Mauro Staccioli, and – with a predominant role – Pietro Consagra.3 The role of Consagra, sculptor from Mazzara del Vallo, was actually broader and more programmatic: he was entrusted with the production of a number of sculptures, including the cemetery gates, a monumental star, Stella (entryway to the Belice valley), and Meeting (1972) – a gathering place in the new Gibellina – as well as with the design of an entire theatre, which was never completed but which placed Consagra in a direct relation to architecture: he who, through 1968, two years before Corrao’s invitation, had been working on the concept of the Città frontale [Frontal City], a sculpture on such a vast scale that it could be inhabited without losing either its frontality or its sculptural dimension. His theatre, with its sculptural character, was a forerunner of the behemoths of contemporary architecture, but at a time that was not yet ripe and in a land where it was difficult to bring such projects to a conclusion. The originality of Consagra’s futuristic architectural vision is clear, especially if viewed from the point of view of the formal evolution of architecture that has given us, in recent decades, buildings comparable to enormous sculptures.

Alberto Zanmatti, the architect working on Consagra’s project, was the intermediary between Burri and Corrao for the former’s invitation to take part in the Gibellina utopia.

Burri visited Gibellina Nuova in 1981, but was not convinced; he surely understood that there was limited room for manoeuvre and that the spaces were already tainted, for him, by the presence of the work of other artists. He then asked to see the site of the tragedy – a place of perpetual pilgrimage according to Corrao: “People still go there all the time, among the ruins of the destroyed town, to think, to meditate, to see their homes again.”4 And it was there, among the ruins, amidst the rubble still imbued with grief, that the artist felt moved to conjure the vision of the Grande Cretto: a crackled white quilt laid over the tortured body of the city. Almost a feat of alchemy, of transformation of the place: from the site of tragedy to the space of remembrance.

Burri immersed himself in the ruins of Gibellina twice over, on two levels: it was physical on the occasion of his first visit, and then active, with the pouring of the pure white cement that mirrored the layout of the town plan.

In Corrao’s firsthand account we read his recollection of the tragedy, which is however already delivered in the tone and with the energy of the will to begin again. The earthquake is described in evangelical language as “[...] freeing the latent energy in the bowels of the earth, as though from the broken hearts of the mothers [...]. The desperate tension that emerges from the bowels of the earth proclaims a new cycle of regeneration even for humankind.”5 Corrao was aware that “those stones could not remain eternal tombs, dedicated to oblivion, like the ones uncovered in the nearby cemetery,”6 and with courage he not only put his trust in Burri’s enterprise, but defended it in the face of attacks by the Sicilian Christian Democrats, who saw in the project only “the delusional madness of Burri and Corrao.”7

64

The Grande Cretto under construction

The local administration, mirror of a reactionary mentality, was blinkered, whereas Corrao and Burri were visionaries – spurred by the pride intrinsic to the nature of the artist: “That pride is a fundamental component of Burri’s personality is not an impression but an affirmation,” wrote Calvesi in 19718 – and were aware from the start of the project’s grandeur, its universality.

The sheer numbers of the Cretto render tangible the immensity of the enterprise.

The ground was prepared, as was the practice in Burri’s work, by piling the rubble together in blocks that followed the original layout of the streets. Work began on 28 August 1985 and concluded on 3 December 1989.9 Five different companies were employed, under the leadership of Giampiero Pesenti’s Italcementi, which provided the ‘Aquila bianca’ cement to cover an area of 86,000 square metres for an overall cost of 5.643 billion lire. These are impressive figures; it was certainly one of the largest investments in culture in Sicily and in all of Italy, with a media impact– albeit not immediate – that has led to the inclusion today of the Cretto of Gibellina in the grand tour of international contemporary art.10 In the catalogue of the recent retrospective of Burri at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Emily Braun, the exhibition curator, says of the Cretto that it is “a white monochrome that speaks of purification,”11 a rite of purification, a shamanic act,12 that harks back to the founding act of a city.

This magnificent New York solo show dwelt on the concept of trauma – The Trauma of Painting was its vivid subtitle – according to a broadly accepted reading that roots interpretive texts in the events of the artist’s life, and interpreted Burri’s work as a metaphor for sutures. Personally I prefer not to yield to such a clear symmetry of life and art: of course, certain events should be given their just importance, such as Burri’s medical degree, his American experience, the concentration camp, his return to an Italy devastated by war, perhaps the very situation he recognised in Gibellina many years later, and for this he was so moved. But his Umbrian roots weigh in the other scale. Burri was a self-taught artist who grew up in the heart of Italy, where Piero della Francesca left an incomparable lesson of rigour and balance – the conviction of impeccable technique towards which every one of Burri’s works aspires. His attention to the early Renaissance focussed on the possible coexistence of simplicity and richness, of metallic elements – even at times gilded and embossed – applied to disciplined drawing and calibrated perspective. Burri certainly knew the detail of the ‘crackled’ mantle of the female worshipper in Piero della Francesca’s Polyptych of the Misericordia in Borgo Sansepolcro, but he was also familiar with innumerable fondi oro, often crazed by extensive craquelure. In 1961, when Giuseppe

65

I have chosen to open with Ungaretti, a poet dear to Alberto Burri, because of their shared sense of pathos in the face of ruins, symbol of tragedy and destruction: for Ungaretti, it was the remains of a village in Friuli, destroyed by bombing; for Burri, it was his encounter with old Gibellina, destroyed by the Belice earthquake.

The sad story is well-known: in January 1968, two tremors within the space of twentyfour hours razed the town of Gibellina, causing more than a hundred casualties and leaving a thousand survivors homeless. The local government decided to abandon the town and build a new one some twenty kilometres away, closer to the highway. In order to compensate for the eradication of the town’s history, the new Gibellina was to be ‘ennobled’ by the presence of numbers of works of art, because, “art is not superfluous,”1 as declared in the title of a long article by Ludovico Corrao, the visionary mayor of the valley of Belice, in 1979. Art was to restore identity to the town, which otherwise risked a “complete loss of identity that might make it seem like the suburb of any random city.

From this comes the necessity for an anchor to our own historical and cultural roots.

The first problem we tackled was to recover as much as possible that preserved the memory of the old, destroyed town in order to retain not a shrine but a remembrance, as a source to which we can refer back.”2 At the outset Corrao’s focus was on Gibellina Nuova, to which he invited Ignazio Moncada, Carmelo Cappello, Turi Simeti, Paolo Schiavocampo, Emilio Isgrò, Rosario Bruno, Carla Accardi, Nino Franchina, Mauro Staccioli, and – with a predominant role – Pietro Consagra.3 The role of Consagra, sculptor from Mazzara del Vallo, was actually broader and more programmatic: he was entrusted with the production of a number of sculptures, including the cemetery gates, a monumental star, Stella (entryway to the Belice valley), and Meeting (1972) – a gathering place in the new Gibellina – as well as with the design of an entire theatre, which was never completed but which placed Consagra in a direct relation to architecture: he who, through 1968, two years before Corrao’s invitation, had been working on the concept of the Città frontale [Frontal City], a sculpture on such a vast scale that it could be inhabited without losing either its frontality or its sculptural dimension. His theatre, with its sculptural character, was a forerunner of the behemoths of contemporary architecture, but at a time that was not yet ripe and in a land where it was difficult to bring such projects to a conclusion. The originality of Consagra’s futuristic architectural vision is clear, especially if viewed from the point of view of the formal evolution of architecture that has given us, in recent decades, buildings comparable to enormous sculptures.

Alberto Zanmatti, the architect working on Consagra’s project, was the intermediary between Burri and Corrao for the former’s invitation to take part in the Gibellina utopia.

Burri visited Gibellina Nuova in 1981, but was not convinced; he surely understood that there was limited room for manoeuvre and that the spaces were already tainted, for him, by the presence of the work of other artists. He then asked to see the site of the tragedy – a place of perpetual pilgrimage according to Corrao: “People still go there all the time, among the ruins of the destroyed town, to think, to meditate, to see their homes again.”4 And it was there, among the ruins, amidst the rubble still imbued with grief, that the artist felt moved to conjure the vision of the Grande Cretto: a crackled white quilt laid over the tortured body of the city. Almost a feat of alchemy, of transformation of the place: from the site of tragedy to the space of remembrance.

Burri immersed himself in the ruins of Gibellina twice over, on two levels: it was physical on the occasion of his first visit, and then active, with the pouring of the pure white cement that mirrored the layout of the town plan.

In Corrao’s firsthand account we read his recollection of the tragedy, which is however already delivered in the tone and with the energy of the will to begin again. The earthquake is described in evangelical language as “[...] freeing the latent energy in the bowels of the earth, as though from the broken hearts of the mothers [...]. The desperate tension that emerges from the bowels of the earth proclaims a new cycle of regeneration even for humankind.”5 Corrao was aware that “those stones could not remain eternal tombs, dedicated to oblivion, like the ones uncovered in the nearby cemetery,”6 and with courage he not only put his trust in Burri’s enterprise, but defended it in the face of attacks by the Sicilian Christian Democrats, who saw in the project only “the delusional madness of Burri and Corrao.”7

64

The Grande Cretto under construction

The local administration, mirror of a reactionary mentality, was blinkered, whereas Corrao and Burri were visionaries – spurred by the pride intrinsic to the nature of the artist: “That pride is a fundamental component of Burri’s personality is not an impression but an affirmation,” wrote Calvesi in 19718 – and were aware from the start of the project’s grandeur, its universality.

The sheer numbers of the Cretto render tangible the immensity of the enterprise.

The ground was prepared, as was the practice in Burri’s work, by piling the rubble together in blocks that followed the original layout of the streets. Work began on 28 August 1985 and concluded on 3 December 1989.9 Five different companies were employed, under the leadership of Giampiero Pesenti’s Italcementi, which provided the ‘Aquila bianca’ cement to cover an area of 86,000 square metres for an overall cost of 5.643 billion lire. These are impressive figures; it was certainly one of the largest investments in culture in Sicily and in all of Italy, with a media impact– albeit not immediate – that has led to the inclusion today of the Cretto of Gibellina in the grand tour of international contemporary art.10 In the catalogue of the recent retrospective of Burri at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Emily Braun, the exhibition curator, says of the Cretto that it is “a white monochrome that speaks of purification,”11 a rite of purification, a shamanic act,12 that harks back to the founding act of a city.

This magnificent New York solo show dwelt on the concept of trauma – The Trauma of Painting was its vivid subtitle – according to a broadly accepted reading that roots interpretive texts in the events of the artist’s life, and interpreted Burri’s work as a metaphor for sutures. Personally I prefer not to yield to such a clear symmetry of life and art: of course, certain events should be given their just importance, such as Burri’s medical degree, his American experience, the concentration camp, his return to an Italy devastated by war, perhaps the very situation he recognised in Gibellina many years later, and for this he was so moved. But his Umbrian roots weigh in the other scale. Burri was a self-taught artist who grew up in the heart of Italy, where Piero della Francesca left an incomparable lesson of rigour and balance – the conviction of impeccable technique towards which every one of Burri’s works aspires. His attention to the early Renaissance focussed on the possible coexistence of simplicity and richness, of metallic elements – even at times gilded and embossed – applied to disciplined drawing and calibrated perspective. Burri certainly knew the detail of the ‘crackled’ mantle of the female worshipper in Piero della Francesca’s Polyptych of the Misericordia in Borgo Sansepolcro, but he was also familiar with innumerable fondi oro, often crazed by extensive craquelure. In 1961, when Giuseppe

65

Marchiori wrote: “Often, before a painting by Burri, I am reminded of an old master, perhaps because of the characteristic emblematic universality,”13 he captured Burri’s connection with the painting of his origins. Burri’s Umbria was also the land of Jacopone da Todi, the great medieval poet who started from terrestrial words of pragmatism and rose to songs of praise.

Lorenzo di Niccolò di Martino, The Archangel Michael, detail of the predella of the polyptych of the Madonna and Child with Saints, 1404 Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Galleria di Palazzo Cini, Venice

Bianco cretto, 1973 acrovinyl on celotex, 24 ¼ × 25 ¼ in Pilar Crespi Robert and Stephen Robert Collection

Burri, then, was a self-taught artist who ‘fed’ on the direct experiences of art. It is the radical nature of his relationship with his materials that made him at once an artist of interest and a point of reference in the international scene. He was an Umbrian artist, of course, but open to the rest of the world; he looked to other countries and secured the attention of the most respected foreign press right from the beginning: one of his catrame [tar] paintings of 1949 was published in Cahiers d’art only a year after it was made.

Such an experiential approach enabled him to look at Futurism without ideological or political prejudices. The Futurists broke the traditional rules of painting and sculpture, they painted beyond the canvas, and, interpreting Cubism, they subverted the orders of space and perspective. Burri bypassed the traditional relationship of the artist to his materials, and instead established a primordial bond with them. His workshop was matter itself, that he interrogated in all its potential, and ultimately his work and his materials converge – or as Vittorio Rubiu observed, in the very years in which Burri created the Cretti: “Any intermediate stage is abolished: the painting is made of matter, but the matter has the form itself of the painting. Matter and form, these two terms, that theory likes to separate, are as a fact forced to converge.”14 In the period immediately after World War II, Italy was unquestionably a deeply wounded country, but it was also the Italy of the Marshall Plan, with the will and the means to revive.

Art, the mirror of that will, questioned American Abstract Expressionism and had only two possible answers: Lucio Fontana’s buchi [holes], or Burri’s catrami [tars] and muffe [moulds] were the only two paths that could be taken in an international context.

The Cretto was the conceptual evolution of Burri’s alchemical investigation of matter; it emerged from the diviner’s crucible with startling results, in varying thicknesses. It posed a basic question – that of three-dimensionality – that Burri had already begun to explore with the gobbi [humpbacks], a series that also belonged to the crucial years of 1949–1951, in which Burri “pushed the painting from behind to create protuberances and bulges, even, in certain cases, using knotted and twisted branches inserted like a cross of St. Andrew at the back of the stretcher. These swellings [...] are an unforeseen disturbance.”15 In the early 1970s Burri, the indefatigable experimenter, arrived at the cretti: the cretto, or crack, is an extensive surface scored by fissures obtained naturally through the simple action of drying. The materials used are industrial: kaolin, resin, pigments and vinavil, “a mixture that in turn evokes the feverish activity of construction sites.”16 By its own nature, the cretto has something of the telluric about it, and yet it is as controlled as are all of Burri’s works; with his tools he defined the chromatic and tactile borders of his sacks as would the land surveyor his ploughed fields. “Everything is so spontaneous, and at the same time so calculated”17 as Rubiu rightly wrote – almost a premonition of the Grande Cretto when seen from afar.

The Cretti have their own vitality, an innate movement. In the words of Italo Tomassoni: “[...] the fissuring translates entirely into a figure (Cretto), in other words like a horizon that freezes the work in an autonomous and all-encompassing formal paradigm. Once the surface has undergone the splitting into scales (craquelure) it offers a double dialectic reading: coupling-separation; concentration-expansion.”18 When Rubiu, referring to this early production, noted how Burri pursues “[...] the same force and solidity of the ground,”19 he conjured an almost prophetic image of what would take place at Gibellina ten years later.

In a now historic book, edited by Giuseppe La Monica and published in 1981, Zanmatti once again offers us a fine description of what to expect from Burri’s project, which at the time was still only in the design stage: “[...] the Grande Cretto as a new image of the old Gibellina is first and foremost a work of art, consistent with Burri’s latest research, but in a dimension that ambitiously takes place in the landscape and becomes architecture. The cretto or crack, almost a representation of the earth that shook, becomes a map where the old streets can still be traced, a labyrinth

66

Grande bianco, 1974, acrovinyl on celotex, 49 5/8 × 83 1/8 in Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, Città di Castello

of memory that offers life back again. Through the ‘fissure-paths,’ people can reach where the church used to be, or the piazza – the piazza where the festivals took place. Land art, sculpture, architecture, town-planning, total artwork, made of the ruins of the past that are covered over almost in order to preserve them, and offered back to the people of Gibellina so they can find themselves again both in the memory of the past and in rediscovered reality. [...] The pedestrian paths, between blocks that average roughly 1.6 metres in height, will in part follow the layout of the old main streets and in part the spontaneous cracks of Burri’s work.”20 Zanmatti further recalled: “We prepared the layout by outlining the area involved with a rectangle that covered almost the entire surface of the ruins, eliminating the outer fringes.

Only then did we grasp the great scale of the project; the work covered more than ten hectares of land, enough to shock the Pharaohs, but not Burri, who impatiently, on a model of the terrain that had been quickly prepared, spread out his surface of white mortar inside the borders of the planned rectangle in order to obtain the fissuring. He incised the network of main streets, and allowed the ‘cretti’ (i.e. the cracks) to form spontaneously.

Executive drawings were prepared that called for the demolition of any unstable walls still standing, then compacting the rubble and covering it with metal nets. in accordance with the forms of the project, and then coating everything with white cement.”21 And when he announced that: “The areas that are not affected by this undertaking will have all rubble removed and be used for low-growing vegetation that will merge with the greenery surrounding the work”22 he revealed the exceptional vision of Burri, who was already aware of the visual effect his immense installation would have in the Valle del Belice. The perfect perimeter was a line of continuity with the formal precision typical of Burri’s work. The Grande bianco [Large White] of 1974, in the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini in Città di Castello, or the Cretto nero e oro [Black and Gold Crack] (1994, Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini in Città di Castello), both exhibited in this exhibition, reveal the same surgical precision in delimiting the edges of the cracks that we find on a monumental scale in Gibellina.

Burri was aware of space, perception and visual construction, and carefully studied viewpoints overlooking the Grande Cretto, whose dialogue with painting becomes all the more evident the further away one stands. A black-and-white photograph taken by Maria Mulas in the 1980s immortalises the Grande Cretto in a highly poetic manner, from a great enough distance to recognise it as “[...] a random calcification of matter, imploded into a precise formal abstraction, without aims or theology other than those of a simple making and unmaking of natural elements. [...] A barren landscape, at whose centre, stretched out like a white shroud, is Alberto Burri’s Cretto, the stone summation of a city that once was there but now is only a ghost.”23

67

Marchiori wrote: “Often, before a painting by Burri, I am reminded of an old master, perhaps because of the characteristic emblematic universality,”13 he captured Burri’s connection with the painting of his origins. Burri’s Umbria was also the land of Jacopone da Todi, the great medieval poet who started from terrestrial words of pragmatism and rose to songs of praise.

Lorenzo di Niccolò di Martino, The Archangel Michael, detail of the predella of the polyptych of the Madonna and Child with Saints, 1404 Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Galleria di Palazzo Cini, Venice

Bianco cretto, 1973 acrovinyl on celotex, 24 ¼ × 25 ¼ in Pilar Crespi Robert and Stephen Robert Collection

Burri, then, was a self-taught artist who ‘fed’ on the direct experiences of art. It is the radical nature of his relationship with his materials that made him at once an artist of interest and a point of reference in the international scene. He was an Umbrian artist, of course, but open to the rest of the world; he looked to other countries and secured the attention of the most respected foreign press right from the beginning: one of his catrame [tar] paintings of 1949 was published in Cahiers d’art only a year after it was made.

Such an experiential approach enabled him to look at Futurism without ideological or political prejudices. The Futurists broke the traditional rules of painting and sculpture, they painted beyond the canvas, and, interpreting Cubism, they subverted the orders of space and perspective. Burri bypassed the traditional relationship of the artist to his materials, and instead established a primordial bond with them. His workshop was matter itself, that he interrogated in all its potential, and ultimately his work and his materials converge – or as Vittorio Rubiu observed, in the very years in which Burri created the Cretti: “Any intermediate stage is abolished: the painting is made of matter, but the matter has the form itself of the painting. Matter and form, these two terms, that theory likes to separate, are as a fact forced to converge.”14 In the period immediately after World War II, Italy was unquestionably a deeply wounded country, but it was also the Italy of the Marshall Plan, with the will and the means to revive.

Art, the mirror of that will, questioned American Abstract Expressionism and had only two possible answers: Lucio Fontana’s buchi [holes], or Burri’s catrami [tars] and muffe [moulds] were the only two paths that could be taken in an international context.

The Cretto was the conceptual evolution of Burri’s alchemical investigation of matter; it emerged from the diviner’s crucible with startling results, in varying thicknesses. It posed a basic question – that of three-dimensionality – that Burri had already begun to explore with the gobbi [humpbacks], a series that also belonged to the crucial years of 1949–1951, in which Burri “pushed the painting from behind to create protuberances and bulges, even, in certain cases, using knotted and twisted branches inserted like a cross of St. Andrew at the back of the stretcher. These swellings [...] are an unforeseen disturbance.”15 In the early 1970s Burri, the indefatigable experimenter, arrived at the cretti: the cretto, or crack, is an extensive surface scored by fissures obtained naturally through the simple action of drying. The materials used are industrial: kaolin, resin, pigments and vinavil, “a mixture that in turn evokes the feverish activity of construction sites.”16 By its own nature, the cretto has something of the telluric about it, and yet it is as controlled as are all of Burri’s works; with his tools he defined the chromatic and tactile borders of his sacks as would the land surveyor his ploughed fields. “Everything is so spontaneous, and at the same time so calculated”17 as Rubiu rightly wrote – almost a premonition of the Grande Cretto when seen from afar.

The Cretti have their own vitality, an innate movement. In the words of Italo Tomassoni: “[...] the fissuring translates entirely into a figure (Cretto), in other words like a horizon that freezes the work in an autonomous and all-encompassing formal paradigm. Once the surface has undergone the splitting into scales (craquelure) it offers a double dialectic reading: coupling-separation; concentration-expansion.”18 When Rubiu, referring to this early production, noted how Burri pursues “[...] the same force and solidity of the ground,”19 he conjured an almost prophetic image of what would take place at Gibellina ten years later.

In a now historic book, edited by Giuseppe La Monica and published in 1981, Zanmatti once again offers us a fine description of what to expect from Burri’s project, which at the time was still only in the design stage: “[...] the Grande Cretto as a new image of the old Gibellina is first and foremost a work of art, consistent with Burri’s latest research, but in a dimension that ambitiously takes place in the landscape and becomes architecture. The cretto or crack, almost a representation of the earth that shook, becomes a map where the old streets can still be traced, a labyrinth

66

Grande bianco, 1974, acrovinyl on celotex, 49 5/8 × 83 1/8 in Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, Città di Castello

of memory that offers life back again. Through the ‘fissure-paths,’ people can reach where the church used to be, or the piazza – the piazza where the festivals took place. Land art, sculpture, architecture, town-planning, total artwork, made of the ruins of the past that are covered over almost in order to preserve them, and offered back to the people of Gibellina so they can find themselves again both in the memory of the past and in rediscovered reality. [...] The pedestrian paths, between blocks that average roughly 1.6 metres in height, will in part follow the layout of the old main streets and in part the spontaneous cracks of Burri’s work.”20 Zanmatti further recalled: “We prepared the layout by outlining the area involved with a rectangle that covered almost the entire surface of the ruins, eliminating the outer fringes.

Only then did we grasp the great scale of the project; the work covered more than ten hectares of land, enough to shock the Pharaohs, but not Burri, who impatiently, on a model of the terrain that had been quickly prepared, spread out his surface of white mortar inside the borders of the planned rectangle in order to obtain the fissuring. He incised the network of main streets, and allowed the ‘cretti’ (i.e. the cracks) to form spontaneously.

Executive drawings were prepared that called for the demolition of any unstable walls still standing, then compacting the rubble and covering it with metal nets. in accordance with the forms of the project, and then coating everything with white cement.”21 And when he announced that: “The areas that are not affected by this undertaking will have all rubble removed and be used for low-growing vegetation that will merge with the greenery surrounding the work”22 he revealed the exceptional vision of Burri, who was already aware of the visual effect his immense installation would have in the Valle del Belice. The perfect perimeter was a line of continuity with the formal precision typical of Burri’s work. The Grande bianco [Large White] of 1974, in the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini in Città di Castello, or the Cretto nero e oro [Black and Gold Crack] (1994, Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini in Città di Castello), both exhibited in this exhibition, reveal the same surgical precision in delimiting the edges of the cracks that we find on a monumental scale in Gibellina.

Burri was aware of space, perception and visual construction, and carefully studied viewpoints overlooking the Grande Cretto, whose dialogue with painting becomes all the more evident the further away one stands. A black-and-white photograph taken by Maria Mulas in the 1980s immortalises the Grande Cretto in a highly poetic manner, from a great enough distance to recognise it as “[...] a random calcification of matter, imploded into a precise formal abstraction, without aims or theology other than those of a simple making and unmaking of natural elements. [...] A barren landscape, at whose centre, stretched out like a white shroud, is Alberto Burri’s Cretto, the stone summation of a city that once was there but now is only a ghost.”23

67

Works in Exhibition

Works in Exhibition

Catrame 1949 74

22 5/8 Ă— 25 3/8 in Tar, oil, pumice stone on canvas Private collection

75

Catrame 1949 74

22 5/8 Ă— 25 3/8 in Tar, oil, pumice stone on canvas Private collection

75

Bianco 1949 76

35 7/8 Ă— 43 7/8 in Oil, varnish, pumice stone on canvas Private collection

77

Bianco 1949 76

35 7/8 Ă— 43 7/8 in Oil, varnish, pumice stone on canvas Private collection

77

Nero Catrame 1950 78

31 ½ × 43 ¼ in Tar, oil, varnish, burlap on canvas Private collection

79

Nero Catrame 1950 78

31 ½ × 43 ¼ in Tar, oil, varnish, burlap on canvas Private collection

79

Nero Bianco 1951 80

35 3/8 Ă— 35 3/8 in Paper, oil, varnish, burlap on canvas Private collection Switzerland, courtesy Tornabuoni Art

81

Nero Catrame 1950 78

31 ½ × 43 ¼ in Tar, oil, varnish, burlap on canvas Private collection

79

Sacco 1952 82

22 7/8 Ă— 33 7/8 in Sack, oil, lire, AM-lire and vinavil on canvas Collezione Roberto Casamonti, courtesy Tornabuoni Arte

83

Nero Bianco 1951 80

35 3/8 Ă— 35 3/8 in Paper, oil, varnish, burlap on canvas Private collection Switzerland, courtesy Tornabuoni Art

81

Grande Sacco 1952 84

59 × 98 3/8 in Burlap, fabric, oil, rope on canvas Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Roma

85

Sacco 1952 82

22 7/8 Ă— 33 7/8 in Sack, oil, lire, AM-lire and vinavil on canvas Collezione Roberto Casamonti, courtesy Tornabuoni Arte

83

Grande Bianco 1952 86

58 5/8 Ă— 98 3/8 in Burlap, fabric, oil, vinavil on canvas Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, CittĂ di Castello

87

Sacco 1952 82

22 7/8 Ă— 33 7/8 in Sack, oil, lire, AM-lire and vinavil on canvas Collezione Roberto Casamonti, courtesy Tornabuoni Arte

83

Umbria Vera 1952 88

39 × 58 3/4 in Burlap, oil on canvas Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Genève

89

Grande Sacco 1952 84

59 × 98 3/8 in Burlap, fabric, oil, rope on canvas Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Roma

85

Plastica M 1 1962 120

58 Âź Ă— 43 1/2 in Plastic, combustion on aluminium frame Private collection

121

Grande Bianco 1952 86

58 5/8 Ă— 98 3/8 in Burlap, fabric, oil, vinavil on canvas Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, CittĂ di Castello

87

Bianco Plastica 1969 132

59 1/2 Ă— 98 7/8 in Acrylic, plastic on celotex Private collection

133

Umbria Vera 1952 88

39 × 58 3/4 in Burlap, oil on canvas Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Genève

89

Cretto G 3 1975 134

67 3/4 Ă— 59 1/2 in Acrovinyl on celotex Private collection

135

Bianco Plastica 1969 132

59 1/2 Ă— 98 7/8 in Acrylic, plastic on celotex Private collection

133

Cellotex 1975 138

59 Ă— 98 in Acrylic, vinavil on celotex Private collection

139

Cretto G 3 1975 134

67 3/4 Ă— 59 1/2 in Acrovinyl on celotex Private collection

135

Grande Nero Cretto 1977 140

59 5/8 × 99 in Acrovinyl on celotex Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle

141

Cellotex 1975 138

59 Ă— 98 in Acrylic, vinavil on celotex Private collection

139

Cellotex 1979 144

59 Âź Ă— 49 3/4 in Celotex, acryilc, vinavil Private collection

145

Grande Nero Cretto 1977 140

59 5/8 × 99 in Acrovinyl on celotex Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle

141

Appendix

160

161

Cellotex 1979 144

59 Âź Ă— 49 3/4 in Celotex, acryilc, vinavil Private collection

145

Catalogue

NOTES For the cross-references in the exhibition and bibliographic entries in descriptions of the works see the notes in Volume VI of the publication Burri Catalogo generale [Burri General Catalogue], edited

by Bruno Corà and published by the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri in 2015.

With regard to the section on exhibitions, the ellipses indicate travelling exhibitions shown in several cities, whereas the superscripts refer to the chronological order within the same city and year; for bibliographies, the superscripts identify texts written by a particular author during the same year.

Catrame, [1949] Tar, oil, pumice stone on canvas 22 5/8 × 25 3/8 in Signed Private collection Bibliography Rubiu, 1963, p. 184 n. 15 ill. b/n; Krimmel1, 1967, pp. 6, 17 n. 1 tav. b/n, 37 n. 2; Krimmel2, 1967, pp. 6, 8; Calvesi1, 1971, p. 22 n. 3 tav. col.; Rubiu, 1975, p. 119 n. 2 tav. b/n; Quintavalle, 1984; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1990, pp. 20 n. 43, 21 ill. col.; Negri, Pirovano, 1993, p. 210 n. 270 ill. col.; Vetrocq, 1994, pp. 26, 42 n. 1 ill. col.; Appella, 1997, p. 3 ill. b/n; Cassim, 1998, p. 15 ill.; Kitatani, 2000, p. 37; Sarteanesi C.2, 2000, p. 145; Katō, 2000, p. 128; Burgazzoli, 2001, ill.; Michelon, 2001, p. 20 n. 2 ill.; Colombo, 2004, p. 20 nota 55; C. S., 2006, p. 73 ill.; Corà, 2007, p. 23; Quattrini, 2007, p. 19 ill.; Casanova, 2007, p. 107 n. 2 ill. col.; Perazzoli, 2007, p. 23 n. 3 ill. col; Fraccaro, 2007, p. 66 ill. col.; De Sabbata, 2008, pp. 30-31 tav. col., 31 n. 17; Celant, 2009, n. 31 ill. col. [Nero, 1951]; Corà, 2009, pp. 20, 22; Lumetta, 2009, p. 9 ill. col.; Corà1, 2010, p. 21; Gargiulo, 2010, p. 27; Daverio1, 2011, p. 33 tav. col.; Corà4, 2012, p. 86; Manescalchi1, 2013, cop. col., p. 90 ill. col.

Exhibitions Roma1, 1953 (dépl.); Darmstadt, 1967, n. 3 ill. b/n (cat.); Rotterdam, 1967, pp. 17 n. 1 tav. b/n, 37 n. 2 (cat.); Milano1, 1984, p. 26 n. 4 tav. col. (cat.); New York..., 1994-95, n. 1 ill. col. (cat.); ...Milano..., 1995; ...Wolfsburg, 1995; Roma2..., 199697, p. 147 tav. col. (cat.); ...Monaco di Baviera..., 1997 p. 147 tav. col. (cat.); ...Bruxelles, 1997; Nagoya..., 199798, pp. 35 n. 1 tav. col., 145 (cat.); ...Tokyo..., 1998; ...Tottori...,1998; ...Hiroshima..., 1998; ...Taipei, 1998, pp. 33 n. 1 tav. col., 137 (cat.); Toyota, 2000, pp. 42 n. 1 tav. col., 100 (cat.); Lugano, 2001-02, pp. 94, 95 tav. col., 187 n. 46 (cat.); Madrid, 2006, pp. 32, 33 tav. col. (cat.); Mamiano di Traversetolo, 2007, pp. 51 n. 1 tav. col., 122 (cat.); Lione, 2008-09, pp. 300 ill. col., 301 n. 164 (cat.); Catania, 2009-10, pp. 26, 27 tav. col., 210 (cat.); Milano3, 2010, p. 58 n. 33 tav. col. (cat.)

162

Bianco, [1949] Oil, varnish, pumice stone on canvas 35 7/8 × 43 7/8 in Private collection Bibliography Rubiu, 1963, p. 184 n. 18 ill. b/n; Quintavalle, 1984; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1990, pp. 20 n. 44, 21 ill. col.; Christov-Bakargiev1, 1996, p. 54; Appella, 1997, p. 3; Sarteanesi C.2, 2000, p. 147; Corà4, 2012, p. 86 Exhibitions Bologna, 1976, n. 1 tav. b/n (cat.); Milano1, 1984, p. 25 n. 3 tav. col. (cat.); Roma2..., 1996-97, p. 149 tav. col. (cat.); ...Monaco di Baviera..., 1997, p. 149 tav. col. (cat.); ...Bruxelles, 1997; Toyota, 2000, pp. 43 n. 2 tav. col., 100 (cat.); Madrid, 2006, pp. 34, 35 tav. col. (cat.)

Nero Catrame, 1950 Tar, oil, varnish, burlap on canvas 31 ½ × 43 ¼ in Signed and dated Private collection, Rome

Nero Bianco, 1951 Paper, oil, varnish, burlap on canvas 35 3/8 × 35 3/8 in Signed and dated Private collection

Sacco, 1952 Sack, oil, lire, AM-lire and vinavil on canvas 22 7/8 × 33 7/8 in Private collection

Bibliography Brandi1, 1963, n. 1 tav. b/n; Nordland, 1977, pp. 20- 21; Averini, 1977, p. 63; Nordland2, 1978, p. 86; Nordland3, 1978, p. 31 ill. b/n; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1990, pp. 424 n. 1826, 425 ill. b/n; Vedrenne-Careri, 1992, p. 42; Farci, 1995, p. 8; Sarteanesi C., 1995, p. 27; Terrosi, 1995, p. 12 ill. b/n; Corà, 1996, p. 14 [Catrame]; Sarteanesi C., 1996, p. 22; Minervino, 1996, p. 27; Sarteanesi C.1, 2000, ill. col.; De Sabbata, 2008, pp. 40 n. 23, 40-41 tav. col.; Iori2, 2012, p. 148

Bibliography Rubiu, 1963, p. 188 n. 47 ill. b/n; Quintavalle, 1984; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1990, pp. 42 n. 139, 43 ill. col.; Buscaroli B., 1995, ill. b/n; Corà, 1996, p. 14; Christov-Bakargiev1, 1996, p. 52; Sarteanesi C., 1996, p. 23; Höhn, 1996, cop. col.; Rizzi1, 1996, ill. b/n; Tellaroli, 2001, p. 116 ill. col.; Serafini, 2005, p. 27; De Sabbata, 2008, p. 106

Bibliography Gotham Guide, 1954, cop. b/n (amb.); Villa, 1960, p. 7 ill. b/n [Collage]; Rubiu, 1963, p. 191 n. 77 ill. b/n [Collage]; Fagiolo dell’Arco, 1966, p. 66; Calvesi1, 1971, p. 5; Calvesi2, 1971, p. 41; Garrone, 1972; The private collection of Martha Jackson, 1973, p. 3 ill. b/n (amb.); Rubiu, 1975, p. 119 n. 13 tav. b/n; Di Genova G., 1978, ill. b/n; Di Genova G., 1982, p. 177 nota 8 [Collage]; Calvesi1, 1987; Di Genova G., 1990, p. 202 nota 12 [Collage]; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1990, pp. 40 n. 135, 41 ill. col.; Terrosi, 1995, p. 10; ChristovBakargiev1, 1996, p. 50 ill. b/n; Serafini, 1999, p. 45; Appella2, 2003, p. 9; Quintavalle, 2003, p. 248 ill. col.; Serafini, 2005, p. 27; Zancan, 2005, p. 24 ill. b/n; Fabbri M. C., 2005, ill.; Celant1, 2007, p. 10 n. 10 ill. col.; Calvesi1, 2008, p. 20; De Sabbata, 2008, pp. 180-181 tav. col.; Daverio1, 2011, pp. 42, 43 ill. col.; Iori2, 2012, p. 170; Finizio, 2013, pp. 18, 19 n. 7 ill. b/n

Exhibitions Roma1, 1952 (dépl.); Beirut..., 1963, tav. b/n [Nero su nero] (cat.); ...Damasco..., 1964; ...Téhéran..., 1964; ...Ankara..., 1964; ...Tunisi, 1964; Roma, 1976, n. 3 tav. col. (cat.); Bologna, 1976, n. 2 ill. b/n (cat.); Lisbona, 1977, n. 3 ill. b/n (cat.); Madrid, 1977, n. 3 ill. b/n (cat.); Los Angeles..., 1977, p. 14 n. 6 ill. b/n (cat.); ...San Antonio..., 1978; ...Milwaukee..., 1978; ...New York, 1978; Roma1, 1980, pp. 148 n. 49, 149 tav. b/n (cat.); Prato, 1996, p. 99 n. 4 tav. col. (cat.)

Exhibitions Milano1, 1984, p. 33 n. 11 tav. col. (cat.); Prato, 1996, p. 102 n. 7 tav. col. (cat.); Firenze, 2005, p. 67 n. 14 tav. col. (cat.)

Exhibitions New York1, 1953; New York2, 1953; New York1, 1954 (dépl.); Bologna2, 2003, pp. 24, 25 tav. col. (cat.); Acqui Terme, 2003, p. 47 tav. col. (cat.); Torino2, 2003, p. 18 n. 4, 19 tav. col., 135 (cat.); Firenze, 2005, p. 77 n. 19 tav. col. (cat.)

Grande Sacco, 1952 Burlap, fabric, oil, rope on canvas 59 × 98 3/8 in Signed and dated Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Roma (donation by the artist) Bibliography Villa, 1953, ill. b/n; F. P., 1953, p. 41 ill. b/n; Arcangeli1, 1957; Priori, 1957; Venturoli, 1959, [Sacco grande]; Brandi1, 1963, n. 14 tav. b/n; Fagiolo dell’Arco, 1966, p. 67; Savonuzzi, 1967; Pinto2, 1968, pp. 18 n. 3 ill. b/n (amb.), 19, 20 n. 5 ill. b/n, nota 2; Ruggeri, 1969; Vincenti, 1969, p. 27 ill. col.; De Marchis, 1970; Pinto, 1970, nota 12; Calvesi1, 1971, p. 22 n. 11 tav. col.; Lambertini2, 1971; Bucarelli, 1973, p. 131; Rubiu, 1975, pp. 11, 119 n. 14 tav. b/n; Mantura1, 1976, p. 9; Giannattasio, 1976; Micacchi, 1976; Trucchi1, 1976, ill. b/n; Morini, 1976, p. 3 ill. b/n; Bramanti, 1976; Argan, 1976; Novi, 1976; Bortolon, 1976, p. 51; Guzzinati, 1976, p. 46; Montealegre, 1976, p. 48 n. 1 ill. b/n [1956]; Nordland, 1977, pp. 31, 32-33; Arcangeli, 1977, n. 75 tav. b/n; Ucla Daily Bruin, 1977, p. 2; Averini, 1977, p. 63; Lambertini, 1978; Nordland2, 1978, p. 90; Nordland3, 1978, pp. 34, 35; Bramanti, 1979, p. 9; De Feo, 1980, p. 152; De Marchis, 1982, p. 585, n. 499 ill. b/n; Argan, 1982, p. 39; Rosini, Gandini, [1982]; Trucchi2, 1982, p. 83 ill. b/n [1972]; Pirovano2, 1984, p. 191; Fréchuret, 1987, p. 157 ill. col.; Dentice, 1987, p. 130; Ercoli, 1987, p. 3; Calza, Maffini, 1988, p. 277 ill. col.; Buratti, 1988, p. 134; Volpi, 1988, p. 5 ill. b/n; De Dominicis, 1989, p. 483; Hollingsworth, 1989, pp. 474-475 n. 20 ill. col.; Celant2, 1990, pp. 16 ill. col., 371-372; Christov- Bakargiev, 1990, p. 23; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1990, pp. 36 n. 114, 37 ill. col.; Zevi, 1990; Gianelli, 1991, p. 7 ill. b/n; Curto, 1991; Cilli, 1991, pp. 62-63 ill. b/n; Minervino, 1991, p. 96; Negri, Pirovano, 1993, p. 214 n. 278 ill. col.; Engelke, 1993, pp. 4 n. 3 ill. col., 6; Castellano, 1994, pp. 79- 80, 83 nota 3, 289 n. 18 ill. col.; Piccioni G., 1994, p. 19; Ferraris Rosazza, 1995, p. 45; Gallian2, 1995; Sarteanesi C., 1995, p. 25; Zorzi1, 1995, pp. 35, 46, 47, 48; D’Amico, 1995, p. 33; Zorzi2, 1995, p. 16; Rosci2, 1995; Pancera, 1995, p. 86; Christov-Bakargiev1, 1996, pp. 49, 51, 52; Sarteanesi C., 1996, p. 23; D’Amico, 1996; Gigliotti, 1996, p. 32; Ghezzi, 1997, p. 212 n. 62 ill. b/n; Pinto, Piantoni, 1997, ill. col.; Sarteanesi C.5, 1998, p. 87 [Grande Bianco]; Serafini, 1999, pp. 12, 13, 40, 56, 58 ill. col., 59, 242 n. 38; Morelli,

1999, p. 20 ill. b/n; Sarteanesi C.1, 2000, ill. col.; Pontiggia, 2001, p. 9 [Sacco]; Corgnati, 2001, p. 18; Fagiolo dell’Arco, 2002, p. 61; Nakai1, 2002, p. 215; Sensi, 2002, p. 39; Forti, 2003, p. 39, nota 8; Fagiolo dell’Arco, 2003, p. 40; Casero, 2004, pp. 378379 ill. col.; Colombo, 2004, pp. 11 n. 10 ill. b/n, 20 nota 55; Calvesi3, 2005, p. 17; Picciau, 2005, p. 27; Vernizzi, 2005, p. 13; Carboni, 2005, p. 213; Barbuto, 2005, p. 315 n. 23.3 ill. col.; Zevi, 2005, p. 31; Madeo, 2005, p. 101; Diez, 2005, p. 152 [Sacco]; Pirani, 2006, p. 134; Neira, 2006, p. 34; Palumbo, 2007, pp. 53, 70, 103; Casanova, 2007, p. 106; Calvesi1, 2008, p. 21; Tomassoni, 2008, p. 52 [Sacco]; Vettese, 2008, pp. 175 n. 18, 176-177 tav. col.; De Sabbata, 2008, pp. 26, 133, 136-137 tav. col., 138, 139 tav. col. (part.); Masoero, 2008, p. 47; Margozzi, 2009, p. 32 [Grosso Sacco]; Marini Clarelli, 2009, p. 11; Ferrario, 2010, pp. 131, 194, 203, 205, 206, 237, 309 nota 25; Panichi, 2010, pp. 73-74; Valentini, 2011, pp. 99, 102, 104, 105, 108; Colombo, 2011, p. 235; Gazzola, 2011, pp. 24, 26; Iori2, 2012, pp. 148, 149, 152, 162, 167, 176, 183 e-f, 191; Lorenzoni, 2012, pp. 218, 222, 223, 224; Sensi, 2012, p. 33; Finizio, 2013, p. 76 n. 40 ill. b/n Exhibitions New York2, 1953; Bologna..., 1957 (dépl.); ...Torino2..., 1957 (dépl.); ...Brescia, 1958; Venezia, 1964, p. 21 n. 1, VI tav. b/n (cat.); Roma, 1976, n. 6 tav. col. (cat.); Lisbona, 1977, n. 6 ill. col. (cat.); Madrid, 1977, n. 6 ill. col. (cat.); Los Angeles..., 1977, p. 20 n. 12 ill. b/n (cat.); ...San Antonio..., 1978; ...Milwaukee..., 1978; ...New York, 1978; Madrid, 1980, n. 18 tav. col. (cat.); Colonia, 1981, p. 420 n. 476 a (cat.); Milano1, 1984, p. 46 n. 24 tav. col. (cat.); Ravenna, 1985, p. 34 tav. col. (cat.); Saint-Étienne, 1987-88, pp. 157 ill. col., 309 (cat.); Francavilla al Mare, 1988, tav. b/n (cat.); Roma, 1990-91, p. 49 tav. col. (cat.); Ferrara, 1995-96, p. 59 n. 12 tav. col. (cat.); Roma2..., 1996-97, p. 164 tav. col. (cat.); ...Monaco di Baviera..., 1997, p. 164 tav. col. (cat.); ...Bruxelles, 1997; Tokyo, 2001, p. 89 ill. col.; Nuoro, 2005, n. 5 tav. col. (cat.); Madrid, 2006, pp. 44, 45 tav. col. (cat.); Roma, 2009, pp. 150 ill. col, 179 (cat.); Roma1, 2011, p. 108 (cat.)

163

Appendix

160

161

Grande Bianco, 1952 Burlap, fabric, oil, vinavil on canvas 58 5/8 × 98 3/8 in Signed and dated on the front, bottom “Burri 52” Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri Bibliography Fischer K. J., 1956-57, p. 11 ill. b/n; Pinto, 1970, nota 12; Calvesi1, 1971, p. 22 n. 13 tav. col.; Lambertini1, 1971, p. 29 ill. col.; Rubiu, 1975, pp. 11, 119 n. 11 tav. b/n; Mantura1, 1976, p. 10; Bramanti, 1976; Corà, 1976, p. 25 ill. b/n; Nordland, 1977, pp. 31, 32; Mantura, 1977, p. 15; Averini, 1977, p. 63; Nordland2, 1978, p. 90; Nordland3, 1978, p. 34; De Feo, 1980, p. 152 n. 51.2 ill. b/n; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1981, tav. col.; Pirovano2, 1984, p. 191; Tomassoni1, 1984, p. 190 ill. col. (amb.); Galloni, 1984, p. 83 ill. col.; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1986, pp. 22 n. 12, 23 tav. col.; Dentice, 1987, p. 130; Ercoli, 1987, p. 3; Serafini, 1988, p. 92 tav. col.; Drudi B., 1989, p. 31 ill. b/n [Sacco 1950]; Caley, 1989, pp. 102-103 tav. col.; Celant2, 1990, pp. 16 ill. col., 371; Carboni3, 1990, p. 111 ill. col.; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1990, pp. 36 n. 116, 37 ill. col.; Serafini1, 1991, pp. 8 ill. col., 9, 10; Celant, 1993, p. 20 ill. b/n; Negri, Pirovano, 1993, p. 214 n. 277 ill. col.; Piccioni G., 1994, p. 19; Pasini, 1995, n. 112 ill. b/n; Sega Serra Zanetti, 1995, p. 150; Sarteanesi C., 1995, pp. 24, 25 ill. col., 26; Zorzi1, 1995, p. 35; D’Amico, 1995, p. 33; Christov-Bakargiev1, 1996, pp. 49, 51, 52; Sarteanesi C., 1996, p. 23; D’Amico, 1996; Gigliotti, 1996, p. 32; Braet, 1997, p. 71 ill.; Sensi, 1998, p. 332 n. 6 ill. b/n;

164

Umbria Vera, [1952] Burlap, oil on canvas 39 × 58 3/4 in Signed; inscribed on the reverse Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Genève

Sarteanesi C. , 1998, p. 81; Serafini, 1999, pp. 12, 40, 58 ill. col., 59, 98-99 tav. col. (amb.), 242 n. 39; Di Capua, Mattarella1, 1999, pp. 15 n. 10, 18; Huber, 1999, p. 68 ill. col.; Sarteanesi C.1, 2000, ill. col.; Sarteanesi C., 2001, p. 20; Sensi, 2002, p. 39; Davidson, 2004, p. 29 n. 8 (amb.); Carboni, 2005, p. 213; Zevi, 2005, p. 31; Pezzanera2, 2005, pp. 20- 21 tav. col.; Messina, 2007, p. 307; Palumbo, 2007, p. 70; De Sabbata, 2008, pp. 56, 132-133 tav. col., 134, 135 tav. col. (part.); Panichi, 2010, p. 70 ill. b/n (part.); Colombo, 2011, p. 235; Di Capua, Mattarella1, 2011, p. 34; Corà3, 2012, p. 26; Iori2, 2012, pp. 149, 151, 155 a ill. b/n (amb.), 175 3

Exhibitions New York2, 1953; Houston2 (Texas)..., 1963, n. 10 (cat.); ...Buffalo (New York)..., 1964; ...Minneapolis..., 1964; ...San Francisco..., 1964; ...Pasadena, 1964; Darmstadt, 1967, n. 19 tav. col. (cat.); Roma2, 1967; Torino, 1971, nn. 11, 21 tav. b/n (cat.); Parigi, 1972, nn. 7, 16 tav. b/n (cat.); Roma, 1976, n. 5 tav. col. (cat.); Lisbona, 1977, n. 5 ill. b/n (cat.); Madrid, 1977, n. 5 ill. b/n (cat.); Los Angeles..., 1977, p. 35 n. 13 ill. col. (cat.); ...San Antonio..., 1978; ...Milwaukee..., 1978; ...New York, 1978; Colonia, 1981, pp. 200 ill. col., 420 n. 476 ill. b/n. (cat.); Roma2..., 1996-97, p. 166 tav. col. (cat.); ...Monaco di Baviera..., 1997, p. 166 tav. col. (cat.); ...Bruxelles, 1997

Bibliography Arcangeli1, 1957; Caramel, 1957, p. 26; Arcangeli, 1960, p. 5; Rubiu, 1963, p. 194 n. 101 ill. b/n; Fagiolo dell’Arco, 1966, p. 67 [1954]; Calvesi1, 1971, p. 22 n. 12 tav. col.; Trucchi2, 1971; Volpi Orlandini, 1972, p. 42; Volpi Orlandini, 1973, p. 174; Trucchi, 1975; Tassi, 1975; Dorfles G., 1976, n. 11 ill. b/n [L’ombria vera]; Nordland, 1977, pp. 31, 32; Arcangeli, 1977, n. 77 tav. b/n; Carloni, 1978, p. 151; Nordland2, 1978, p. 90; Nordland3, 1978, pp. 34, 35; De Feo, 1980, p. 145; Pratesi M., 1980, p. 13; Volpi Orlandini, 1980, p. 407, n. 11 ill. b/n; Trucchi1, 1982, p. 4; Pirovano2, 1984, p. 193; Leymarie, 1985, p. 8; Leymarie, 1988, p. 15; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1990, pp. 102 n. 406, 103 ill. col.; Levi1, 1990, p. 24; Auregli D.2, 1991; Zorzi1, 1995, pp. 77, 78; Terrosi, 1995, p. 13 ill. b/n [1953]; Antolini, 1998, p. 12; Pratesi M., 1998, p. 81 [1955]; Serafini, 1999, pp. 40, 51 tav. col., 242 n. 49; Diez, 2005, p. 155; Palumbo, 2007, p. 92; De Sabbata, 2008, pp. 144 tav. col., 145, 146, 147 tav. col. (part.); Iori2, 2012, p. 158; Lorenzoni, 2012, p. 207 Exhibitions Venezia, 1955, p. 18 ill. b/n (cat.); Parigi1, 1956 (cat.); Venezia2, 1956 (dépl.); Bruxelles, 1959, n. 26 (cat.); Torino, 1971, nn. 14, 23 tav. b/n [La Umbria Vera] (cat.); Bologna, 198586, pp. 276 n. 213, 222 ill. b/n (cat.); Ginevra..., 2011, pp. 18-19 tav. col., 276 n. 94, 277 tav. col., 298 ill. col. (cat.); ...Montpellier, 2011-12

Sabbia, 1952 Oil, sand, vinavil on canvas 35 3/8 × 43 ¼ in Signed and dated Collezione Intesa Sanpaolo Gallerie d’Italia - Piazza Scala, Milano Bibliography Brandi1, 1963, n. 12 tav. b/n; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1990, pp. 428 n. 1838, 429 ill. b/n; Cifani, Monetti, 2003, pp. 286, 287 tav. col.; Sarteanesi C.2, 2008, p. 60; De Sabbata, 2011, p. 237 ill. col.; Fontana1, 2012, pp. 136 n. 87, 137 ill. col.; Iori2, 2012, p. 148; Pirovano, Tedeschi, 2012, cop. col.; Tedeschi1, 2012, pp. 34 tav. col., 35, 222 I.11; Tedeschi2, 2012, p. 135 Exhibitions Roma1, 1952 (dépl.); Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), 1963, p. 10 [Composition] (cat.); Milano, 200809, pp. 73 n. 4 tav. col., 228 (cat.)

Gobbo Bianco, 1953 Fabric, oil, sawdust, pumice stone on shaped canvas 39 5/8 × 34 ¼ in Signed and dated Private collection

Rosso, 1953 Fabric, canvas, oil, vinavil on canvas 29 7/8 × 24 1/4 in Signed and dated Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri

Bibliography Villa, 1953, ill. b/n; Gendel, 1954, p. 28 ill. b/n (part.); Wescher1, 1956, p. 58 ill. b/n [Collage]; Sie und er, 1961, p. 7 ill. b/n; Brandi1, 1963, p. 30, n. 9 tav. col. [1952]; Fagiolo dell’Arco, 1966, p. 71; Mannoni, 1972, p. 104 tav. col. [1952]; Caroli, 1979, p. 18 tav. col. [1952]; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1990, pp. 104 n. 415, 105 ill. col.

[1952]; Celant, 1993, pp. 20, 40 nota 5; Agenda..., 1997, ill. b/n [1952]; Sarteanesi C.2, 2000, p. 145; Ferrari, 2001, ill.; Prati, 2001, ill.; Evangelisti, 2001, ill. b/n; Colombo, 2004, p. 12 n. 12 ill. b/n; Gale, 2005, pp. 73, 97; Miracco1, 2005, p. 30; Ortiz Bravo, 2006, p. 3 ill.; Maderuelo, 2006, p. 19 ill. b/n; Celant1, 2007, p. 10; Sarteanesi C.1, 2008; Sarteanesi C.2, 2008, p. 60; Mattarella, 2008, p. 62 ill.; Celant, 2009, pp. 14 ill. col., 19, 20; Gargiulo, 2010, p. 28; Fontana1, 2012, p. 137; Iori2, 2012, pp. 149, 152

Bibliography Villa, 1953, ill. b/n; Arcangeli1, 1957; Carrieri, 1960, tav. col. [Rosso 52, 1952]; Arcangeli, 1960, p. 5; Rubiu, 1963, p. 197 n. 135 ill. b/n [60×75 cm]; Calvesi, 1971, p. 22 n. 14 tav. col.; Guzzi, 1975; Morini, 1976, p. 3; Averini, 1977, p. 63; Finesso2, 1978, p. 8; Torrente1, 1978, p. 5; Bonito Oliva1, 1979, p. 9 ill. b/n; Honour, Fleming, 1982, pp. 622 n. 21.26, 623 tav. col., 626; Bignardi, 1986; Corà, 1987, p. 94 ill. col.; Caley, 1989, p. 105 tav. col.; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1990, pp. 68 n. 257, 69 ill. col.; Negri, Pirovano, 1993, p. 26 n. 280 ill. col.; Memoria. Nel 25°..., 1998, p. 65 ill. col.; Apa, 1998; Serafini, 1999, pp. 90 ill. col., 91, 242 n. 65; Sarteanesi C.2, 2000, p. 145; Canova, 2001; Serafini2, 2001, p. 49 ill. col.; Canevari, 2003, p. 28; Colombo, 2004, p. 15 n. 17 ill. b/n; Diez, 2005, pp. 152-153 ill. col.; Palumbo, 2007, p. 30; Gazzola, 2011, p. 20 ill. col.; Corà1, 2012, pp. 26-27, 120, 121 tav. col.; Iori1, 2012, p. 120; Iori2, 2012, pp. 153, 181 f, 191

Exhibitions Roma1, 1953 (dépl.); Roma2... 199697, p. 170 tav. col. (cat.); ...Monaco di Baviera, 1997, p. 170 tav. col. (cat.); ...Bruxelles, 1997; Nagoya..., 199798, pp. 36 n. 2 tav. col., 145 (cat.); ...Tokyo..., 1998; ...Tottori..., 1998; ...Hiroshima..., 1998; ...Taipei, 1998, pp. 34 n. 2 tav. col., 137 (cat.); Toyota, 2000, pp. 46 n. 5 tav. col. [1952], 100 (cat.); Perugia, 2001, p. 42 tav. col.

[1952] (cat.); Genova, 2004, p. 41 tav. col. (cat.); Londra, 2005-06, pp. 98, 99 tav. col. (cat.); Madrid, 2006, pp. 42, 43 tav. col. (cat.); Mamiano di Traversetolo, 2007, pp. 62 n. 15, 63 tav. col., 122 (cat.); Milano, 2008-09, pp. 73 n. 5, 74 tav. col. [1952], 228 (cat.); Catania, 2009-10, pp. 32, 33 tav. col. [1952], 210 (cat.); Milano3, 2010, p. 88 n. 70 tav. col. [1952] (cat.)

Exhibitions Roma1, 1953 (dépl.); Torino, 1971, nn. 17, 26 tav. b/n (cat.); Parigi, 1972, nn. 11, 19 tav. b/n (cat.); Roma, 1976, n. 7 tav. col. (cat.); Lisbona, 1977, n. 7 tav. b/n (cat.); Madrid, 1977, n. 7 tav. b/n (cat.); Napoli, 1978, cop. col. (cat.); Bologna..., 1991, pp. 55 tav. col., 182 n. 34 (cat.); ...Locarno, 1991-92; San Gabriele (Teramo), 1998, p. 119 tav. col. (cat.); Toyota, 2000, pp. 52 n. 10 tav. col., 100 (cat.); Reggio Emilia, 2001-02, pp. 34 n. 2 tav. col., 112 (cat.); Roma, 2005-06, pp. 90 n. 27, 91 tav. col., 203 (cat.); Madrid, 2006, pp. 46, 47 tav. col. (cat.); Sansepolcro, 2007; Firenze1, 2012, pp. 120, 121 tav. col. (cat.)

Sacco e Bianco, 1953 Sack, fabric, canvas, oil on canvas 58 5/8 × 98 in Signed and dated; inscribed on the reverse Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle (Donation by the artist)

Rosso Nero, 1953 Fabric, pumice stone, oil, vinavil on canvas 39 3/8 × 33 7/8 in Signed and dated; inscribed on the reverse Collezione Intesa Sanpaolo Gallerie d’Italia - Piazza Scala, Milano

Bibliography Time, 1955, p. 66 ill. b/n; Ponente, 1963, p. 956, n. 535 tav. col.; Brandi1, 1963, p. 26, n. 21 tav. col.; Simon, 1967, cop. col. (part.); Crispolti3, 1971, p. 2 ill. b/n; Dizionario Enciclopedico Bolaffi…, 1972, p. 341 n. 336 ill. b/n; Rubiu, 1975, p. 119 n. 19 tav. b/n; Valsecchi, 1979, ill. b/n (part.); Abadie, 1986, pp. 110, 111 ill. col.; De Fusco, 1989, pp. 68, 69 n. 60 ill. b/n; Celant2, 1990, pp. 165 ill. b/n, 378; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1990, pp. 66 n. 245, 67 ill. col.; Serafini1, 1991, pp. 28, 29 ill. col. (part.); Bonito Oliva1, 1992, p. 216 ill. col.; Negri, Pirovano, 1993, p. 215 n. 279 tav. col.; Vetrocq, 1994, pp. 29, 69 n. 32 tav. col.; Cappelli A., 1995, p. 92 ill. b/n; Sensi, 1998, pp. 334 n. 9 ill. b/n, 335; Serafini, 1999, pp. 40, 54 tav. col., 242 n. 62; Delogu, 2000, ill. col.; De Sabbata, 2008, pp. 49 n. 32, 53 ill. col.; Dorfles, Vettese, 2011, p. 324 ill. col.; Iori2, 2012, pp. 156, 159 b, 165; Lorenzoni, 2012, pp. 230, 233 a-b

Bibliography Villa, 1953, ill. b/n; Brandi1, 1963, n. 13 tav. b/n; Rassegna clinicoscientifica, 1984, cop. col; Boerci, 1984, p. 19 ill. col.; Verzotti, 1989, p. 15 ill. col.; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, 1990, pp. 48 n. 167, 49 ill. col.; Sproccati, 1990, p. 436 ill. col.; Sanesi, 1992, pp. 74, 75 tav. col.; Tedeschi, 1995, p. 369 n. 717 ill. col.; Colombo, 2004, p. 14 n. 14 ill. b/n; Dal Bello, 2005, pp. 64, 65 ill. b/n [Grande Sacco]; Diez, 2005, p. 153 ill. col.; Colombo, 2011, p. 235; De Sabbata, 2011, p. 238 ill. col.; Iori2, 2012, p. 153; Pirovano1, 2012, pp. 137 n. 187, 139 tav. col.; Tedeschi1, 2012, pp. 35 tav. col., 222 I.12; Tedeschi2, 2012, p. 135; Finizio, 2013, p. 23 nota 17

Exhibitions New York4..., 1955, p. 84 ill. b/n (cat.); ...Minneapolis1..., 1955; ...Los Angeles..., 1955-56; ...San Francisco, 1956; Bruxelles, 1959, n. 14 tav. b/n [250×150 cm] (cat.); Krefeld..., 1959, n. 1 (cat.); ...Dortmund, 1959; Parigi1, 1960, pp. 60 ill. b/n, 94 n. 25 (cat.); Monaco di Baviera, 1960, n. 21 (cat.); Darmstadt, 1967, n. 21 ill. b/n, tav. b/n (part.) (cat.); Rotterdam, 1967, pp. 21 n. 5 tav. b/n, 37 n. 21 (cat.); Venezia, 1968, pp. LIV n. 15 tav. b/n, XLI tav. b/n (cat.); Prato, 1970, n. 15 a ill. b/n (cat.); Torino, 1971, nn. 23, 5 tav. col. (cat.); Parigi, 1972, nn. 17, 4 tav. col. (cat.); SaintÉtienne, 1987-88, (f.c.) (cat.); Madrid, 1990- 91, pp. 382 tav. col., 502 (cat.); Hertogenbosch, 1993, p. 47 n. 14 ripr. (cat.); New York..., 1994-95, n. 32 tav. col. (cat.); ...Milano..., 1995; ...Wolfsburg, 1995; Antibes, 1995, pp. 113 tav. col., 133 (cat.)

Exhibitions Roma1, 1953 (dépl.); New York1, 1957, n. 11 ill. b/n [Untitled] (cat.); Milano, 1976; Milano1, 1984, p. 53 n. 31 tav. col. (cat.); Milano2..., 1993; ...Firenze2..., 1993; ...Roma2, 1994; Milano3, 1996; Genova..., 1996, p. 246 ill. col. (cat.); ...Milano5, 1996, p. 246 ill. col. (cat.); Roma2..., 199697, p. 169 tav. col. (cat.); ...Monaco di Baviera..., 1997, p. 169 tav. col. (cat.); ...Bruxelles, 1997; Genova, 2002, pp. 90 tav. col., 120 ill. b/n (cat.); Roma, 2005-06, pp. 88 n. 24 tav. col., 203 (cat.)

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2006 I Cellotex nell’autobiografia di Burri, Arte Fiera, Galerie Sapone, Bologna, 26-30 January.

Presented by Maurizio Calvesi, catalogue Alberto Burri, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 14 March-29 May. Presented by Maurizio Calvesi, Chiara Sarteanesi, catalogue Alberto Burri: la sezione aurea dei Cellotex, Museo Fondazione Luciana Matalon, Milan, 25 November 2006-31 January 2007. Presented

by Italo Tomassoni, catalogue 2007 Burri opere 1949-1994. La misura dell’equilibrio, Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Mamiano di Traversetolo, 8 September-2 December.

Presented by Bruno Corà, Chiara Sarteanesi, catalogue Alberto Burri, Mitchell - Innes & Nash, New York, 29 November-18 January 2008, catalogue. Travelling to Zürich, De Pury & Luxembourg, 16 February-29 March 2008, presented by Germano Celant.

2008 Alberto Burri, La Triennale di Milano, Milan, 11 November-8 February. Presented by Maurizio Calvesi, Chiara Sarteanesi, catalogue 2009 Alberto Burri. Equilibrio - Struttura - Ritmo Luce, Palazzo Clemente, “Fondazione Malvina Menegaz” per le Arti e le Culture, Castelbasso, 20 June- 30 August. Presented by Francesco Poli, catalogue.

Burri Colore Omaggio, Galleria delle Arti, Città di Castello, 29 August-29 November. Presented

by Chiara Sarteanesi, dépliant.

Burri e Fontana. Materia e Spazio, Fondazione Puglisi Cosentino, Palazzo Valle, Catania, 15 November -14 March. Presented by Bruno Corà, catalogue.

2010 Alberto Burri. Cellotex: la strategia della materia, Galleria MOdenArte, Modena, 13 March-1 May. Presented by Galleria MOdenArte, catalogue Alberto Burri Art Paris + Guest 2010, Grand Palais, Galerie Sapone, Paris, 17-22 March.

Presented by Bruno Corà, catalogue.

Alberto Burri cretti neri, Luxembourg & Dayan, New York. 10 May -30 July. Presented by Maurizio Calvesi, catalogue Burri e Fontana a Brera, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 16 June-3 October. Presented by Sandrina Bandera, Bruno Corà, catalogue Combustione: Alberto Burri and America, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, 11 September-18 December. Presented by Lisa Melandri, Michael Duncan, catalogue 2011 Alberto Burri dalla concretezza reale all’incanto della forma, Mazzoleni Galleria d’Arte, Turin, 21 October-31 January. Presented

by Francesco Poli, catalogue 2012 Alberto Burri Form and Matter, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London, 13 January-7 April. Presented by Massimo Duranti, catalogue

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Alberto Burri primi ed ultimi, Arte Fiera - Galerie Sapone, Bologna, 27-30 January. Presented

by Bruno Corà, catalogue I neri di Burri, Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto, 1 July-15 September. Presented by Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini.

2017 Alberto Burri, Gli arazzi per la Regione EmiliaRomagna, Sede della Regione Emilia-Romagna, Bologna, 25-30 January, dépliant

Alberto Burri, Opera al Nero Cellotex 1972-1992, Galleria dello Scudo, Verona,15 December-31 March. Presented by Bruno Corà, catalogue 2013 Alberto Burri. Black Cellotex, Luxembourg & Dayan, New York, 8 March-20 April. Presented

by Antonio Sapone, catalogue 2014 Alberto Burri - Hans Hartung, Arte Fiera Galerie Sapone, Bologna, 24-27 January.

Presented by Bruno Corà, catalogue Burri Unico e Multiplo, Pinacoteca Comunale di Gaeta, Gaeta, 14 June-12 October. Presented

by Giorgio Agnisola, catalogue Rivisitazione: Burri incontra Piero della Francesca, Museo Civico, Sansepolcro, 31 October-12 March, Presented by Bruno Corà, catalogue Fuoco nero: materia e struttura attorno e dopo Burri, Salone delle Scuderie in Pilotta, Parma, 20 December 2014-29 March 2015. Presented

by Carlo Arturo Quintavalle, catalogue 2015 Omaggio a / Homage to Alberto Burri, Arte Fiera, Bologna, 23-26 January. Presented by Claudio Spadoni, Giorgio Verzotti Alberto Burri: Oro e Nero [Gold and Black], European Parliament, Brussels, 28 January.

Burri e Pistoia, Palazzo Sozzifanti, Pistoia, 10 May-26 July. Presented by Bruno Corà, catalogue BURRI. I Cretti, Museo regionale d’Arte Contemporanea, Palazzo Belmonte Riso, Palermo, 25 July-20 September. Presented

by Bruno Corà, catalogue Alberto Burri The Trauma of Painting, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 9 October 2015-6 January 2016. Presented by Emily Braun, catalogue Alberto Burri e i poeti. Materia e suono della parola, MAON, Museo d’Arte dell’Otto e Novecento, Rende, 11 November 2015- 28 February 2016. Presented by Bruno Corà, Tonino Sicoli, catalogue Burri e Brandi un’amicizia informale, Santa Maria della Scala, Villa Brandi Vignano, Siena, 21 November 2015-31 January 2016.

Presented by Vittorio Brandi Rubiu, catalogue 2016 Alberto Burri Das Trauma der Malerei, K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 5 March-7 July. Presented by Nora Lukas, Valerie Hortolani, dépliant

Alberto Burri in his studio in Casenove di Morra, Città di Castello, 1977

Alberto Burri le dimensioni della materia, Podesteria di Michelangelo, Chiusi della Verna, 9 July- 11 September. Presented by Laura Caruso, Saverio Verini, catalogue Burri. Lo Spazio di Materia/ tra Europa e USA, Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco, Città di Castello, 24 September 2016-6 January 2017. Presented

by Bruno Corà, catalogue

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Biography

Alberto Burri was born in Città di Castello, near Perugia, on the 12 March 1915. His father, Pietro Burri, was a wine merchant, and his mother, Carolina Torreggiani, an elementary schoolteacher. He graduated in Medical studies at the University of Perugia in 1940. A volunteer medical officer in the Italian army, he was captured by the Allies in Tunisia in 1943 and was a prisoner of war at Camp Hereford, Texas, USA. There he decided to abandon the medical profession in favour of painting. When he returned to Italy, in 1946, he continued painting and settled in Rome, where he had his first solo exhibitions in 1947 and 1948. In 1948 he abandoned figuration definitively in favour of abstraction and became concerned with the expressive potential of raw materials. In 1950, he created his first Sacchi [Sacks], works that came to dominate his following solo exhibitions, which were held in various American and European cities as well as in Rome. In 1951 he founded the Gruppo Origine with Mario Ballocco, Giuseppe Capogrossi and Ettore Colla: the group split up the same night. In 1952 he made his first appearance at the Venice Biennale, to which he was invited again in 1956, 1958, 1960, 1964, 1966, 1968, 1984, 1986 and 1988. In 1995 his work was included in the exhibition Venezia e la Biennale. I percorsi del gusto, at the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, on the occasion of the 46th (centenary) Venice Biennale. Between 1952 and 1953, Burri’s art attracted international attention with shows in New York and Chicago.

During the 1950s and 1960s, he created various cycles of works by using fire on different raw materials. Thus, the Combustioni [Combustions], the Legni [Woods], the Ferri [Irons] and the Plastiche [Plastics] took shape. In the 1970s, while his work continued to be shown at solo and group exhibitions at some of the most prestigious museums in the world – including the Museo Civico di Torino (1971), the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris (1972), the Triennale di Milano (1973), the Tate Gallery in London (1974), the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome (1976) and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (1978) – he developed the Cretti and the Cellotex cycles.

In the late 1970s, Burri realised a series of complex cyclical works that retraced the different stages of his artistic career. The first group, collectively titled Il Viaggio [The Journey], was shown in Città di Castello in 1979 and in Munich the following year. The cycles that followed this include the Orti (1980) series, Sestante (1983), Rosso e Nero (1984), Annottarsi (1985-1987), Metamorfotex (1991) and Il Nero e l’Oro (1991-1993).

He established the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri in Città di Castello, as a gift to his town, in 1978. In this building he exhibited a permanent collection of specially chosen works whose installation was curated by him and remains unchanged to this day.

In 1984, for the Grande Brera Project aimed at the contemporary sector, Milan hosted the first comprehensive retrospective of Burri’s work at Palazzo Citterio.

In 1989, the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini acquired the former Seccatoi del Tabacco (tobacco-curing warehouses) in Città di Castello. These industrial architectural structures became the perfect containers for monumental cycles of site-specific paintings and sculptures, created by the artist as a way of complementing the historical core of works on show at Palazzo Albizzini.

Alberto Burri died in Nice on 13 February 1995.

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