Alberto Burri
A doctor who came out of a prisoner-of-war camp and began stitching, burning and cracking his materials.
Alberto Burri was born at Citta di Castello in Umbria in 1915 and qualified as a physician. Captured in North Africa in 1943, he began to paint in a prisoner-of-war camp in Hereford, Texas, on the only support available, and never practised medicine again. The work that followed is organised by material rather than by image: the Sacchi of stitched and patched burlap sacking, the Combustioni made by burning plastic sheet with a blowtorch, the Legni of charred wood, the Ferri of welded steel, and finally the Cretti, great white surfaces of kaolin and resin cracked like dried mud. He died in 1995.
Because the materials were chosen for what they do rather than for permanence, condition is more central here than with almost any contemporary of his: plastic embrittles and discolours, burlap slackens and tears at the stitching, and cretti surfaces lose flakes that cannot be replaced. Original tears, burns and cracks are the work and are constantly misreported as damage, which cuts both ways. The Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini at Citta di Castello holds the archive and issues the archiviazione that the market treats as the reference. Editions and multiples exist and are separate.
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