ALBERTO BURRI
Alberto Burri was born in 1915 in Città di Castello. After graduating in medicine, he was drafted as a medical officer during World War II. In 1944, he was captured in North Africa with his company and imprisoned in Hereford, Texas, where he began painting on burlap canvases available to him. After his release in 1946, he moved to Rome and held his first solo exhibition at Galleria La Margherita the following year. Like many Italian artists of his generation, Burri criticized the widespread politicized realism of the late 1940s and turned towards abstraction, becoming a key figure in the Informal movement. Between 1949 and 1950, he started experimenting with unconventional materials, creating tactile collages using burlap, tar, and pumice stone. During this time, he developed the Muffe (Molds) and Gobbi (Hunchbacks) series, the latter involving shaped canvases that broke with the traditional flatness of the support. His exploration of the ambiguity of the painting surface and his use of unusual materials led him to join the Gruppo Origine, which exhibited at the Galleria dell’Obelisco in Rome in 1951. In 1953, Burri gained attention in the United States through a group exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York called Younger European Painters. In the mid-1950s, he began burning materials in his Combustioni (Burnings) series, made from charred wood and burlap, which he showed at the Galleria dell’Obelisco in 1957. In 1958, he exhibited works made by welding iron plates together at Galleria Blu in Milan, winning the 3rd prize at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. The following year, he won the Premio dell’Ariete in Milan and the UNESCO Prize at the São Paulo Biennale. In 1960, the Venice Biennale dedicated a room to him, where he won the Critics’ Prize. In the early 1960s, he continued his Combustioni, incorporating plastic into his works. In 1963, Burri held his first major retrospective in the United States at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. In 1965, he was awarded the Grand Prize at the São Paulo Biennale. In 1972, the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris held a retrospective of his work. In the 1970s, Burri focused on the Cretti series, which evoked sun-scorched earth and played with the idea of trompe-l’oeil. In 1977, a retrospective opened at the University of California, Los Angeles, and was later moved to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York the following year. In 1979, he began working with a new material, cellotex, which he continued to use throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Burri passed away in Nice in 1995.
