Alberto Burri - Buy or sell works
12 March 1915, Città di Castello (Italy) - 13 February 1995, Nice (France)
Alberto Burri was an important Italian artist within the field of post-war modernism. He is known for his material images, collages and assemblages, which can be classified as ‘material realism’. Stylistically, they constitute a unique variety of Informalism; thematically, they revolve around Burri's experiences as a soldier and physician in World War II.
Burri initially began painting while a prisoner of war. After the war ended, he gave up his job as a doctor to pursue a career as an artist. He used his work as a vehicle to explore his wartime experiences. Not only is war among Burri's most frequent motifs, but his choice of materials-collages made from scraps of fabric, linen, sackcloth, nails, wood, and plastic-evoke the subject as well. He seems to select ‘poor’ material deliberately, imbuing worthless fabric with new meaning and creating new artefacts from destroyed ones.
He visited Paris in 1947 and was ostensibly also influenced by Joan Miró’s collages and Jean Dubuffet’s impasto works. Burri’s newly created ‘material realism’ differed formally from the abstract art of the post-war period, however, through its blurring of the boundaries between painting and sculpture.
His work was exhibited in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York as early as 1954.
In addition, Burri is a seven-time exhibitor at the Biennale di Venezia and a three-time documenta.participant.