Citt di Castello, 1915 – Nice, 1995

Alberto Burri was an Italian painter. After studying medicine, he served in the Italian army during the Second World War. Captured in Tunisia in 1943, he was sent to a prisoner of war internment camp in Texas, where he began to paint. He soon abandoned his medical profession to devote himself entirely to art.

A will towards experimentation brings him to work unusual materials, such as with the Sacchi – characterized by random imperfections and tears, brought back to a refined harmony by mending and other interventions, but also works such as the Catrami, the Muffe and the Gobbi (1950- 55).

He joined Capogrossi, Colla and Ballocco in the foundation of the “Origine group” (1950), promoted in the Milanese magazine AZ which promises a renewal based on common commitment and awareness of change: getting rid of the past – even recent – in favor of an art that makes a clean sweep of the mannerist involutions of abstractionism, returning, in fact, “to the origins”.

1953 is the year of the international turning point, due to great overseas exhibitions (New York and Chicago): Burri appears as the central figure of an informal art that is finally ennobled and authoritative. Numerous awards do not prevent him from continuing his research on common materials, giving life to some of his most incisive works, the Combustione, a series that – before Klein – highlights the vivifying trace of fire in rich receptive possibilities, determining a formal violence that goes beyond appearance. In the two-year period 1956-58 instead the Ferri and the Legni were born.

Starting in 1960, Burri participates in the Venice Biennale and in other important exhibitions including an exhibition at the Muse d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1972, an exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London in 1974 and at the National Museum of Modern Art in Rome in 1976. The important retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York (1977) is the prelude to the opening of the Foundation in Citt di Castello (1981), donated by the artist to his hometown, which documents all the steps in his production.

Palazzo Albizzini Foundation-Burri Collection, Citt di Castello
Albero Burri, by SIAE 2026