Burri plastiche eng

Bruno CorĂ

BURRI Plastiche

Bruno CorĂ

BURRI Plastiche

Immagine di copertina: Rosso Plastica, 1962 plastica, combustione su tela, 83,5 × 102 cm

Editorial project Forma Edizioni srl Florence, Italy redazione@formaedizioni.it www.formaedizioni.it

Photo credits

Editorial director Laura Andreini

David Heald©SRGF, NY – pp. 86-87, 100-101, 122-123

Editorial consultant Riccardo Bruscagli Editorial staff Maria Giulia Caliri Livia D’Aliasi Graphic design Archea Associati, Florence Elisa Balducci Augustina Cocco Canuda Isabella Peruzzi Mauro Sampaolesi Alessandra Smiderle

Project by Michele Casamonti

© Aurelio Amendola – pp. 5, 36, 38, 39, 41, 44, 45, 64-65, 85, 89, 124 Collezione Prada, Milan – pp. 63, 80

© Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, Città di Castello – pp. 2, 6-7, 8, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34-35, 42, 46-47, 49, 50, 52, 56, 59, 68, 71, 72, 75, 76, 82-83, 90, 93, 97, 98, 99, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 110, 112, 115, 116, 119, 121 © Mulas Heirs – pp. 10-11, 14-15, 16-17, 18-19 © Heidi Horten Collection – p. 23 Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bequest of Katherine S. Dreier, 1952-98-1 © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Succession Marcel Duchamp – p. 48 Private Collections – pp. 60, 94, 111 Tornabuoni Art – p. 79

Translations Angela Arnone Elizabeth de Bertier Renée Tannenbaum Simon Turner

Edited and written by Bruno Corà Editorial coordination Tornabuoni Art Elizabeth de Bertier Ermanno Rivetti Organisation Tornabuoni Art Paris Thanks to Paola Sapone Roberto Casamonti and all those who contributed but wish to remain anonymous Special thanks to the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri for having given access to arcihval photographic material that has been essential to the making of this book We would like to thank all those who contributed to the making of this catalogue the staff of Tornabuoni Art Paris, London and Florence, in particular, Francesca Piccolboni, Lucile Bacon, Marta Colombo, Tiffany Nortier, Salomé Parineau, Ermanno Rivetti and Jenna Romagnolo

Photolithography LAB di Gallotti Giuseppe Fulvio Florence, Italy

© Association Marcel Duchamp by SIAE 2018 © Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, Città di Castello – by SIAE 2018 Texts © the authors

© 2018 Forma Edizioni srl, Florence, Italy The editor is available to copyright holders for any questions about unidentified iconographic sources.

All rights reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, without prejudice to the legal requirements provided for in Art. 68, sub-sections 3, 4, 5 and 6 of Law No. 633 of 22 April 1941.

First edition: June 2018

Previous page: Portrait of Alberto Burri, ca. 1964 p. 5: Alberto Burri at work on Grande Plastica in his studio in Case Nove di Morra, Città di Castello, 1976.

Photo: Aurelio Amendola

pp. 6-8: Portraits of Alberto Burri in his Grottarossa studio, Rome, 1962.

Photos: Ugo Mulas pp. 10-17: Alberto Burri, Grande Plastica, Grottarossa, 1962.

Photos: Ugo Mulas

INDEX

20

BURRI: THE PLASTICHE Bruno Corà

53

CRITICAL ANTHOLOGY edited by Bruno Corà

54 57 61 66 70 77 81 84 92 95 102 109 113

Cesare Brandi, 1962 Marisa Volpi, 1962 Giulio Carlo Argan, 1962 James Johnson Sweeney, 1963 Marcello Venturoli, 1965 Gian Luigi Verzellesi, 1966 Franco Passoni, 1968 Franco Simongini, 1971 Giulio Carlo Argan, 1975 Cesare Brandi, 1976 Gerald Nordland, 1977 Erasmo Valente, 1981 Emily Braun and Carol Stringari, 2015

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APPENDIX Biographical note Selected Bibliography

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Burri: the Plastiche

Combustione Plastica, [1958] plastic, acrylic, combustion on canvas, 3 3/4 × 5 7/8 in / 9,5 × 15 cm

Combustione Plastica, [1958] plastic, combustion, vinavil on cellotex, 3 3/4 × 6 in / 9,6 × 15,2 cm

29

It is well-known that these “almost ethereal work[s] of art”, as observed by Brandi, would come to include less rarefied and more dramatic versions, almost infernal in their poetic statement. The red Plastiche and black Plastiche evoke “a descent into hell” in an individual’s imaginary in a way that has rarely been seen in painting since Hieronymus Bosch.

But the transparency of Burri’s Plastiche is not of the same solid, clear and uniform quality as that of glass, and even less like the fractured glass found in Duchamp’s work. On the contrary, it is complex and only partially penetrable by the gaze because the layering of the cellophane is no longer done “in relation to the background, but as a structure in and of itself” (Brandi).

The transparent Plastiche exhibited at the Marlborough gallery are the result of a combustion which, through the void created by the lesions and craters, as well as the burnt matter and residue, the light and soft, flame-formed shadows, the smoke and the multiple light beams that criss-cross the surface, reaches a complexity that becomes a structure. The red and black Plastiche, on the other hand, have different characteristics. With the red Plastiche, Burri abandons transparency in favour of an impenetrable surface which, if anything, is trying to orient itself towards the unavoidable presence of the lacerated material, sometimes veiled and shining like drool, sometimes red and penetrated by the soft shadows of the flame, and other times as black as the abyss formed by the acrylic at the back of the canvas in the areas defined by the craters.

In the black Plastiche, the movement of the image is achieved by the contrast between the burned cellophane on the surface, which is also broken and covered in wrinkles, creases and the thickened material – all solicited and stimulated through fire – and the black, opaque background of the mute acrylic that gapes beyond the confines of the orbital craters.

Additionally, Burri often created combustions on large sheets of red or black plastic that were mounted onto wooden frames, such as in Rosso Nero Plastica [Red Black Plastic], 1964 (no. 990, double-sided) (pp. 59 and 97) or in Nero Plastica [Black Plastic], 1964 (p. 90) in the Collezione Marzotto, and in Grande Nero Plastica [Great Black Plastic], 1964 (no. 982) (p. 99) in the Collezione Burri in Palazzo Albizzini.

The transformation, via the medium of combustion, of red and black plastic surfaces up until 1964 – or the physical augmentation of standard materials – reached such a degree that it would not be improper to describe it as dramatic, and even sometimes infernal, given the elaborate furor with which the artist took to the plastic material. From the successive stages of combustion there emerge in the thick dripping matter innumerable folds and a heavy, draping of material.

Burri, who did this instinctively, is guided by an innate sensitivity and the ability to conjure up an echo, from deep within our collective memory, that awakens in each of us not only the pathos of hundreds of sacred “offerings” of European painting, from the 13th to the 16th century, but also the most recent Deleuzian aesthetic considerations regarding folds in Baroque art, or those of Didi-Huberman on “fallen drapery.”3 In those same years, Burri began working on a vast new conception of plastic combustions that require further and separate consideration. Among them, in fact, one can find the cycle of small plastic works made of thin sheets of colourless

Bruno Corà

3 Cf.: Gille Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, University of Minnesota Press, 1992; Georges Didi-Hubeman, Ninfa moderna : essai sur la drapé tombé, Gallimard, Paris, 2002.

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4 Laura Lorenzoni, “Burri e la Biennale di Venezia 1952-1988”, in Alberto Burri.

Opera al Nero, exhibition catalogue for Alberto Burri.

Opera al Nero. Celotex 1972-1992, curated by Bruno Corà (Verona, Galleria dello Scudo, 15 December 2012 – 31 March 2013), Skira, Milan, 2012, p. 227. The numbers of the works are the same as those used in the catalogue that was published in 1990.

5 Vittorio Rubiu, “Alberto Burri”, in XXXIII Biennale Internazionale d’Arte, Venezia, exhibition catalogue, Giardini di Castello, Venice, 1966, p. 32.

Burri: the Plastiche

transparent cellophane applied on masonite, Celotex fibreboard or hardboard. There is also the rather more solemn and powerful group known as Bianco Plastica [White Plastic], whose production ran from 1965 until 1968 and includes true masterpieces – a selection of which was exhibited by Burri at the 1966 Venice Biennale – and finally more combustions, variously titled Nero Plastica, Rosso Plastica, liberally disseminated between 1964 and 1967, of which many are of medium size.

From the relevant body of work produced during those years, one must single out the Bianco Plastica works exhibited at the 1966 Venice Biennale. “Room XXI was reserved for him in the Padiglione Italia” at the Biennale, “which was 28 metres long […] The selection fell on a body of eleven works among the plastic combustions – one of which was not exhibited – […] all of which were made, as indicated in the exhibition catalogue ‘with acrylic and vinyl paint and mixed media’. Five works are dated 1965: Bianco B1 (Bianco B, c.s. 779) (p. 107), Bianco B3 (Bianco Plastica B3, c.s. 798) (p. 103), Bianco B4 (datable 1965, c.s. 777) (p. 110), Bianco B5 (datable 1965, c.s. 889) (p. 116), Grande Bianco B1 (Grande Bianco Plastica, c.s. 854) (p. 105). From 1966 there were Bianco B6 (Bianco Plastica, datable 1966, c.s. 793) (p. 112), Grande Bianco B2 (Grande Bianco B2, c.s. 853) (p. 104), Grande Bianco B3 (Grande Bianco Plastica, c.s. 944) (p. 119), Bianco B7 (Bianco Plastica B5, 1965, c.s. 780) (p. 108) and Bianco B8 (Bianco Plastica B7, c.s. 849) (p. 115), whose presence in the exhibition is confirmed by contemporary footage, even though it cannot be clearly traced to any numbers indicated in the list of works.” 4 Despite some errors and controversy, as well as Burri’s preemptive renunciation of the Biennale Prize, for which he explicitly put himself out of the running, the exhibition received “a positive response”. Vittorio Rubiu, in the introduction to the catalogue, writes: “Today, on the surface, Burri appears to be making very different paintings, but the final result is still the same. They are large works where, on the slow accumulation of a white that enlarges and dilates vision, are deposited (or explode) telluric blacks […]. The black is the result, the trace of an action, a combustion that creates space because it destroys it: but the white puts it back together and assimilates it to its own quality, which is that of being, above everything, neutral – obstinately and almost involuntarily expressive.”5 In the Bianco Plastica, Burri uses some of the larger supports seen between 1964 and 1970. On Celotex fibreboard backgrounds, painted in white or black opaque acrylic, one finds the sheet of cellophane to be methodically horizontally aligned before being assailed by Burri’s firmly guided flame. In the voids created by the combustion, Burri covers the surface in black. The titles of the works, which are usually named after the material used and the colour – Bianco Plastica – are followed by numbers or letters, or by a combination that spells out the three years between 1965 and 1968 in which Burri also created other plastic combustions with various formal and spatial characteristics.

As under other circumstances and in other series of works, even within the strict structure that defines these works, the dramatic effects of the combustion reveal a latent emotion that is barely discernible. It is well-known that Burri has never admitted the presence of such elements in his work, even when it sometimes becomes difficult to prove their absence. It is much more important to note how, in a radical antithesis between the white of the acrylics and the black of the combustions, he attains – despite the presence of areas caressed by the smokiness or browning produced by the flame – a quality of image that is not only unprecedented, but also of unparalleled ineffability.

Combustione Plastica, 1958 plastic, fabric, acrylic, vinavil, combustion on canvas, 38 5/8 × 33 1/8 in / 98 × 84 cm

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Bruno Corà

left alone him and I, it was like being in a church, there was only silence, interrupted by the combustion and by the clicks of my Hasselblad… A series of photographs, the entire sequence of how the combustions were created […] they were among the last ones, he didn’t make any more.”8 These photographs undoubtedly possess an epic quality, generated by a happy circumstance of knowingly baring witness, in capturing the creative process between the artist and his medium, the flame, which seems to emanate almost from inside his own body, thereby giving the image a crucial intensity that is equivalent to his own passion.

Ashes, air and breath

Alberto Burri at work on Grande Plastica in his studio in Case Nove di Morra, Città di Castello, 1976. Photo: Aurelio Amendola

Though we have looked at the production of the Plastiche with reference to fire and to the process of combustion (which is partly different to the burning of the Legni or Carte [Papers]), we must still add a few considerations relative to the cinder produced by burning the plastic, as well as the effect of Burri blowing on the flame, which is no less significant than when the artist cauterises the liquefaction of the material by hand.

It has been observed that the edges of the plastic burned by the flame are of a certain shade of “dull” black that only the most expert engravers have been able to equal.9 Burri liked ash both because of its chromatic qualities and because it embodies the physical transformation and disappearance of the plastic material.

It will not be possible here to try and equal or adequately reference in these few pages what Jacques Derrida has masterfully written on “what is left of fire”. However, purely as a suggestion that should be useful in understanding the significance and quantity of references found in the French philosopher’s text on Cinders, a few lines will suffice: “– The fire: what one cannot extinguish in this trace among others that is a cinder. Memory or oblivion, as you wish, but of the fire, trait that still relates to the burning. No doubt the fire has withdrawn, the conflagration has been subdued, but if cinder there is, it is because the fire remains in retreat. By its re­treat it still feigns having abandoned the terrain. It still camouflages, it disguises itself, beneath the multiplicity, the dust, the makeup powder, the insistent pharmakon of a plural body that no longer belongs to itself – not to remain nearby itself, not to belong to itself, there is the essence of the cinder, its cinder itself.”10 Derrida evokes the idea of “disappearance”, much like the text by Nietzsche which he cites, referring to the insoluble pairing of life and death: “Our whole world is the ash of countless living creatures: and even if the animate seems so minuscule in comparison to the whole, it is nonetheless the case that everything has already been transposed into life – and so it goes.” The act of burning is destructive, and the ash is the trace of the destruction wrought by Burri on the plastic material. However, it is simultaneously the creation of a new image, a vital work, in that its form announces a new order of space and a balance of the signs obtained through it.

In the films that portray Burri at work on his plastic combustions (pp. 44-45), one can observe the movement of his hands as they cauterise the lesions they have just produced (p. 42), but not before the artist first blows hard on the burning plastic to form an opening within it (pp. 44-45). Breath is therefore another medium which

8 Aurelio Amendola, in Corriere della Sera, 22 January 2012.

“La lettura”, p. 27, edited by Gianluigi Colin.

9 The combustions on paper made by Burri first with the help of Edizioni Castelli (1959) and later of Stamperia 2RC, directed by Valter Rossi (1964-1965), have demonstrated with various techniques the possibility of emulating the look of “burning” and of ash.

10 “– Le feu: ce qu’on ne peut pas éteindre dans cette trace parmi d’autres qu’est une cendre. Mémoire ou l’oubli, comme tu voudras, mais du feu, trait qui rapporte encore à de la brûlure. Sans doute le feu s’est-il retiré, l’incendie maîtrisé, mais s’il y a là cendre, c’est que du feu reste en retrait.

Par sa retraite encore il feint d’avoir abandonné le terrain. Il camoufle encore, il se déguise, sous la multiplicité, la poussière, la poudre de maquillage, le pharmakon inconsistant d’un corps pluriel qui ne tient plus à lui-même – ne pas rester auprès de soi, ne pas être à soi, voilà l’essence de la cendre, sa cendre même.” Jacques Derrida, Cinders, translated

by Ned Lukacher in 1987, re-published by University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln & London in 1991, p. 61.

54

Cesare Brandi “Burri”, introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition of the Marlborough gallery in Rome, 1962

Critical Anthology

Burri’s last series of works was the Ferri [Irons].

After these grand, dark works came a long hiatus; the Plastiche [Plastic works], which are exhibited here, represent a dazzling new beginning. They were made between 1961 and the early months of 1962, and, in a certain sense, they are the synthesis of all of Burri’s previous experiments. However, despite the artistic similarities that link these works back to the very early Gobbi [Hunchbacks] paintings, the Combustioni [Combustions] and the Ferri, the newness they present is surprising, and not just because of the brand new material – transparent plastic – with which they were created. Truly, if there were ever a material that seemed unsuitable to creating an image, it would be this kind of cellophane-like plastic, and not just because of how difficult it is to give it a purpose other than that of its everyday use as the shiny and unpleasant wrapping that covers vegetables at the supermarket. Its own aseptic qualities cry out for it to be “seen but not touched”, though this, in turn, becomes almost a provocation, a cry for it be ripped and torn. It is unpleasant also because of its fictitious splendour, for the lustre that it gives a commercial display necessarily dissolves when the object or product is later stripped and brought back to a kind of lay state. So the product or object will seem poorer, crippled by the very fact that it comes into contact with us and is used in the way it was intended, despite the fact that, it is at this very moment, rather than when it is seductively clad in celophane, that the object or product becomes fully realised.

The way in which Burri overcame the everyday ordinariness of this material was a true artistic breakthrough, while for transparent plastics this constituted nothing less than a kind of redemption. The image was transferred to the plastic from the Ferri and the Combustioni.

The interplay between the blacks and reds, and the whites that seem as though deflowered by

the flames, was rendered extraordinarily intricate by the many different layers that were deposited one on top of the other, like layers of light.

The very stratification of the work becomes the structure and the new dimension of Burri’s image. And over time, the work becomes increasingly clear to itself, assuming a transparency that is no longer in relation to its background, but is a structure in and of itself. Furthermore, it reintroduces, in an entirely different way, the thinness of the ancient grisaille glass windows that the painters of old used to condense and depict the greyness of the Northern sky. The richness of the figurative possibilities of these Plastiche is evermore surprising. A preciousness is aroused in this plastic that is worthy of the most beautiful of materials, from onyx to mother-of-pearl; this mingles with hints of soft and luxurious animal skins, but also reminds us of pimples, sores and wounds.

But, as all this is nonetheless contained and simultaneously turned on and off by the sudden flickering of lights, just as occurs in a sunset, it seems that light and colour could vanish at any moment. But the contemplation to which the Plastiche lend themselves does not exhaust them; don’t think that these works sit comfortably within themselves without attempting to involve the viewer. However, in a simultaneous attempt to defend themselves, they create a cocoon made up of lights and flashes, woven together with a final layer of plastic that denies them the possibility of being touched.

As soon as the work demands integration with the viewer, it closes itself up, with its shining and ever-changing dance of flickering light, suspended in a place in which it is no longer a material object in cellophane wrapping, but an almost ethereal work of art.

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Cesare Brandi

76

Critical Anthology

Grande Plastica, [1963] plastic, combustion on aluminium frame, 78 3/8 Ă— 98 in / 199 Ă— 249 cm

77

Gian Luigi Verzellesi “Burri tra Plausi e Botti”, in L'Arena, 29 June 1966

The visitor who prepares to go through the gates of this 30th Biennale with the naive illusion that he will be able to enjoy a view of the latest in the world of art – on his own and with his own eyes, as though comfortably observing it from his windowsill – may not be aware that he is in for a highly complicated and troubled journey. A one-to-one relationship with the works on show in the various pavilions, great and small, generally leads to perplexity.

This perplexity becomes even more pronounced and ends up shattering the original illusion that it might be possible to understand contemporary paintings and sculptures the way one might understand (or misunderstand) those of the past.

Turn to the critics So, for those who have the patience and do not want to give up on understanding, and would rather visit the Biennale than go for a swim at the Lido, there is only one way: turn to the critics, go to the experts for clarification and initiation.

And that is when the trap springs: at the first cry for help, countless rescuers come at once with their boundless enthusiasm. And the poor visitor, tormented by what he does not understand, is bombarded with a veritable smorgasbord of explanations: magical, or almost magical formulas and philosophical prescriptions, free discourses and richly arrayed academic demonstrations.

All the representatives of so-called art criticism are doing their utmost to bring grist to their dialectic mills. And our timid visitor stands there, looking at this show with the air of someone confused and terrified by a crowd of people fighting for the sacred right to provide them with intellectual aid.

Astonishment soon gives way to curiosity when he hears so many opinions so generously offered: he listens to them one at a time, in an orderly fashion. And so, sitting on a bench in the Giardini as though on a throne of ignorance, surrounded by a swarm of

Gian Luigi Verzellesi

exponents of high culture, the visitor ventures to ask his first ill-advised question about the value of Burri’s strange art: paintings made of rags, charred and riddled with holes, the discarded remains of clothes, and sheet metal shaped by the flame of a welding torch, one knows not whether out of Promethean enthusiasm or ignominy.

A seven-member jury (five foreigners and two Italians) awarded Burri the prize (a mere million lire) of the International Association of Art Critics, in what was evidently some sort of consecration ceremony.

Dissenters and Champions But just listen to the tone of aggression and insolent contempt in the speech of that fifty-something critic that no one was quick enough to shut up: “It’s an indecency! Anything was to be expected (these Biennale people have accustomed us to the most insipid fare) but not that these threadbare rags of Burri’s should deserve the most coveted honour from the most authoritative forum of critics! This is no laurel wreath – it is a little crown of trash placed on a work that exudes the most terrifying annihilation of the spirit, a loony rag-bag of brutish materials onto which someone has given vent to a level of sadism that should be studied by a psychoanalyst… The fact that patched-up sacks can be considered the height of contemporary art just says it all!”

These are the charges levelled against Burri.

And the visitor is about to start clapping when a very different speech emerges from the crowd of critics. “I’m astonished”, says the new speaker, “that anyone could have listened to such a crass, provocative attack, so disrespectful of the painful afflictions from which Burri’s virile art has emerged. The materials he picks out are the remains of things discarded by man after use. Burri’s benevolent spirituality redeems innocent artefacts unfit for work.

He delivers them from a dismal destiny of death by recomposing them in the most marvellous

84

Franco Simongini Il suo mondo bruciato, in “Il Messaggero”, 11 September 1971

Critical Anthology

Reaching Alberto Burri is no easy task: following the ancient Roman Via Flaminia until the Grottarossa crossroads, you have to take a winding road next to the famous Saxa Rubra – where it is said that Constantine raised the victory standard before his famous battle – you go up another street that becomes a plateau, devoid of houses or any other kind of building.

It is only a few kilometres – quite painless, really – but enough to give the sensation of being very far from the noise of the city. Here there are only a few cottages and farms, a few horses dotted among the wild yellowish shrubbery, and a few hunters, walking by the side of the road with their guns slung over their shoulders.

In one of these cottages lives Alberto Burri.

The welcome one receives when ringing the bell by the small wooden gate is that of a ferocious dog that runs barking towards unwelcome visitors and trusting guests alike. I confess that I was scared the first time: when the gate opened automatically as I was trying to open it, I saw the black of the dog throwing itself at me. I jumped back into my car, which I had left open just in case. At his master’s call the dog becomes small and docile, rubbing itself against my legs, and Burri reassures me, in his velvet briefs, hunting jacket and his broad Umbrian accent from Città di Castello, that he is “a good dog who wouldn’t hurt a fly”.

Burri lives in an all-white lime-washed house with a wonderful terrace from which one can admire, in the distance, the dome of Saint Peter’s.

The studio is in a separate building, a huge hangar where Burri works and photographs his art (Burri is an exceptional amateur photographer but, ever shy, he doesn’t want people to know about his hobby). What matters most to him is his collection of hunting rifles – he has about twenty beautiful pieces of every kind – a source of great pride for a hunter like him. The inside of his house is simple, like a Franciscan monastery. It has the same Spartan look of the very works that decorate its walls: the Sacchi [Sacks], Ferri [Irons], Legni [Woods], and burned plastics. Sparsely furnished – a long rustic wooden table, an uber-modern armchair and

a fireplace – above the fireplace, thrown together pell-mell, is a rack of guns and a series of cameras.

“So!”, says Burri, inviting me to sit down and rubbing his hands together. He puts me at ease with a bottle of whisky, and his smile turns into an open, friendly laugh if one mentions his reputation as a great hunter. He immediately starts remembering his house in the mountains, above Città di Castello, above Trestina, Morra, Volterrano, at the border between Umbria and Tuscany. To get there one must telephone him – he drives down, asks you to leave your car in a safe place on the square in front of the church in Volterrano, and takes you up through the puddles in his wonderful American Jeep, climbing like a cat to his house of grey stone, his refuge away from the world, in the fresh air where he alternates between painting and hunting.

If it is not easy to reach Burri, then it is almost impossible to get him to talk. He is one of the few Italian artists whom no one ever manages to interview, to get to discuss his life and his work. Born in Città di Castello in 1916 [sic], he is one of very few Italian contemporary artists of international renown – one of the great masters of today. His art is unsettling and informal; it represents a complete break from the past.

Who doesn’t remember the scandal that Burri’s famous Sacchi caused when they first appeared around 1950?

Burri’s work was a form of artistic expression that was too new, too different from that to which our eyes were used to and, even if the use of materials different to traditional painting had already been accepted, for the first time a humble, cheap, modest material like a burlap sack was entering directly into a painting, and therefore into modern art.

“I don’t stay in Rome very often – says Burri – I feel like a stranger. I work here in Grottarossa and see very few people. Most of the year I stay in Città di Castello with my oldest friends…”.

From the way Burri talks, you understand that he is shy, and wary – an introvert, who doesn’t want to talk about himself (and perhaps puts a little conceit and cunning into avoiding the topic

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Appendix

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Selected Bibliography

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Selected Bibliography