Alberto Burri (Città di Castello, 1915 – Nice, 1995) is today recognized among the radical innovators of the second half of the XXth Century, forerunner of many artistic movements like the New Dada, the Arte Povera, the Nouveau réalisme, the Post Minimalism and the Process art. His work leaves the way open to many critical and methodological interpretations. After graduating in Medicine and leaving as military physician, Burri started his career as a painter in 1944 in a prison camp in Texas. Since the beginning, he developed an abstract language in the series Catrami/Tars (1948), Muffe/Molds (1950) and Gobbi/Hunchbacks (1950) where synthetic enamels, tar and pumice stone combine with oil colours. From this experimentation in the use of heterogeneous materials on the canvas he developed the constants of his work, always conceived of as “cycles”. In 1946 he moved to Rome and in the 1950s he started the famous series ofSacchi/Sacks. This was something completely new in the artistic scene and it was inspiring for Robert Raucheberg, conquered by the beauty of the jute and the encrusted pigments during a visit to the study of Burri in Rome (1952). The international echo will bring Burri's work for the first time in the US and in Canada (1953-1955). In 1954 he introduced fire as an additional artistic element, starting the series of the combustions which included Legni/Woods (1956), Plastiche/Plastics (1958) and Ferri/Irons (1958). Invited by Giulio Carlo Argan, he took part to La Biennale di Venezia in 1960 and then again in other editions (1966, 1984, 1988). From 1973 he started the well known series of Cretti, surfaces which call to mind the cracked earth during the periods of height dryness. Belonging to this group, there is the shroud made of concrete with whom he covered the ruins of the streets and alleys of Gibellina, destroyed by an earthquake (1968). The Cretto di Burri is a monument to memory, a work between architecture, installation and sculpture, realized between 1984 and 1989 but finished after Burri's death on a surface of 90,000 sqm in 2015. He worked on Cellotex from 1975, a new cycle where the protagonist is an impasto of sawing and glue used in the construction industry. In the same year he took place to Operazione Arcevia, an inter-disciplinary project of the architect Ico Parisi gathering a group of artists (among them: Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti and Michelangelo Antonioni) in the village with the same name. For this project, Burri realized the sketch for the Theatre today conserved at Palazzo Albrizzini (Città di Castello).
Galleria d'Arte Maggiore g.a.m. published a catalogue in 1999 (Ico Parisi. La Casa, Electa, 1999) dedicated to the house and the important art collection of Parisi, testifying of the several collaborations with the artists he was contemporary to. Burri's entire production is conceived by the artist himself as a unique ensemble of shape and space. On the side of his sculptural produciton we remember: the Grande Ferro/Great Iron (1980), exhibited in Perugia on the occasion of the meeting between Burri and Joseph Beuys, the work Il Nero e l’Oro/Black and Gold (1993) realized for the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche (MIC) in Faenza, given as a gift to the city council, and the Grande Nero Cretto/Large Black Crack (1976/77) donated and conserved in the Sculpture Garden of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).
Also his activity as set designer is very relevant with the collaborations for the productions of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan (Spirituals, 1963) and at Teatro Opera in Rome (November steps, 1992), just to mention a few of them. Burri has also always worked with graphic, realizing among other things the poster for the FIFA World Cup of Italia 90(1990). He also donated the series Oro e Nero/Gold and Black (1994) to the Uffizi in Florence the year before he passed away. Burri's work has greatly influenced all the art which followed him, questioning the concept of art itself. Art as mimetic make-believe is definitely over in favour of a type of art which wants to represent life using life itself. His work was inspiring for artists of all fields. For example, the movie Il deserto rosso by Michelangelo Antonioni (1964), the musical performance realized by Robert Del Naja (who is probably Bansky) from Massive Attack at the Cretto di Burri together with Giancarlo Neri (2015), as well as the influences in the fashion world in the last collection by Laura Biagiotti (fall/winter, 2017-2018).
In 2014 Christie's in London realized an auction record (£ 4,674,500) for Combustione Plastica/Plastic Combustion 1960-1961, then broken by Sacco e Rosso/Sack and Red (1959) sold for £ 9,109,000by Sotheby's in London in 2016.
Many retrospectives took place after his death in the most important museums in Italy and worldwide. Just to mention a few of them: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofìa, Madrid (2006), Palazzo Panizza, Turin (2003 and 2011) and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2015). The majority of his works are now conserved in his hometown Città di Castello, between the Fondazione Burri at Palazzo Albizzini and the area of the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco, but also in some of the most prestigious permanent collections in the world: Centre Pompidou in Paris, Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Tate Gallery in London, Galleria nazionale d'arte moderna e contemporanea in Rome, Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Turin, MART – Museo d'arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto.