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Alberto Burri

Alberto Burri

” Words are of no help to me when I try to talk about my painting. It is an irrepressible presence that refuses to be translated into any other form of expression. It is a presence that is both imminent and active. This is what it means: to exist as well as to paint. My painting is a reality that is part of myself, a reality that I cannot reveal in words. ”

Alberto Burri

 

Burri – the creator and the constant experiment

Alberto Buri was born in Città di Castello (Perugia) on 12 March 1915. In 1940 he graduated as a doctor from the Università degli Studi di Perugia. He obtained a specialty in tropical medicine. After the outbreak of World War II, Buri served as a doctor in the Italian army. In 1943, he was captured while his regiment was stationed in Tunisia. Buri was transferred to a POW camp in Hereford, Texas. There he began to paint.

Cesare Brandy tells of the cathartic experience that the pursuit of painting had on the artist during his time in prison. Brandi writes “imprisoned in the camp… giving up the practice of his medical profession , painting, which had been on the furthest horizon of his life, offered itself first as laziness and recreation and, gradually, as a substitute for action and then as action itself”.

After returning to Italy in 1946, he settled in Rome and devoted himself to painting. In 1947 and 1948 he organized his first solo exhibitions in Rome (Galleria La Margherita). In 1951, he participated in the creation of the Origine group together with Ballocco, Capogrossi and Colla. The document describes the desire to overcome historical abstractionism and how “the artists of the group expressed the need for a rigorous, coherent vision full of energy. But above all anti-decorative […]”. These were crucial years in which the artist isolated matter, worked on overlays, on glossy and matte surfaces, the first inserts.

In 1946, Burri returned to Italy and decided to pursue art, although his family was against it. He received support from his uncle, who was a musician, and went to live in Rome.

The first exhibitions and Origine group

In 1947 and 1948 he held his first personal exhibitions in Rome ( Galleria La Margherita ). In 1951, he opened his first gallery in the city. He participated in the founding of the group  “Origine” with Mario Ballocco, Giussepe Capogrossi and Ettore Colla. The document describes the desire to overcome historical abstractionism and how ” the artists of the group expressed the need for a rigorous, coherent vision full of energy. But above all anti-decorative [ … ] “. These were crucial years in which the artist isolated matter, worked on overlays, on glossy and matte surfaces, the first inserts.

In the early 1970s, Burri began a new series of works, Cretti (Cracks), which in their physical and visual restitution confront us with the origin of the energy of a surface, suggesting associations with the image of a geological phenomenon. These works are made with kaolin, resins, pigment and glue. Their genesis is linked to the artist’s connection with California, where he has lived in Los Angeles for several years since 1968, especially during the winter months: ‘Quando ero in California, andavo spesso a visitare il Deserto della Morte. “When I was in California, I often went to visit Death Valley. The idea came from there, but then in the painting it turned into something else. I just wanted to demonstrate the energy of a surface.”

In an interesting paradox, the Cretes represent the final, fixed-on-a-mat result of deconstruction that gives rise to construction, just as in the Combustions of the 1950s matter becomes form by returning to nothingness.

After scandal and rejection by a significant number of critics, Storms achieved unqualified success in the 1960s and it was consolidated in the early 1970s. In the meantime, however, his vision seems to be calming down; it sets aside the dramatic emphases of informal studies while retaining all its solemnity and breadth as the historical retrospectives continue: Assisi, Rome, Lisbon, Madrid, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Milwaukee, New York, Naples.

The decade from the mid-1980s to the year of Bury’s death was dominated by paintings titled Nero (Black) or Annottarsi (Until the Night). An unsettling and expressive expression, annottarsi is like saying “to become night”, to venture into the night. For Burri, who is now in his seventieth year, it is also a “becoming night” of his existence, a movement towards the final threshold. Black, a shade that is often combined with red, starting with sacks, or in later years with gold, combined with a powerful expressiveness that can also be seen in “celotex”, now occupies almost his entire imagination.

In 1993, a new cycle entitled Il Nero e l’Oro (The Black and the Gold), consisting of 10 works by Cellotex, was opened to the public at Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco. In the same year, a large ceramic work with the same title, Il Nero e l’Oro (The Black and the Gold), was created for Faenza and exhibited at the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche, a gift from the artist to the city. Also in 1993, Buri’s graphic works were exhibited at the Museo delle Genti d’Abruzzo in Pescara.

In 1994 Burri participated in the exhibition Italian Metamorphosis 1943-1968 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York. From May 11 to June 31, 1994, the series entitled Burri il Polittico di Atene, Architetture con Cactus (Burri the Athenian Polyptych, Architectures with Cactus) was presented at the National Gallery of Art in Athens, and later exhibited at the Italian Cultural Institute in Madrid (1995). 10 December 1994 marked the donation of Burri to the Uffizi in Florence, including a 1969 painting Bianco Nero and three series of prints from 1993-94.

Alberto Burri died in Nice on 13 February 1995.

 

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