Vistamarestudio is proud to present BURRI CICLI SCELTI dell’opera grafica, an exhibition featuring a selection of works from some of Alberto Burri’s most important print cycles.
First presented last December at Vistamare gallery in Pescara, with prints from seven different cycles, the exhibition now arriving in Milan will include a series of multiples from some of Burri’s most significant cycles of work: Cretti (1971), Multiplex (1981) and Mixoblack (1988).
The exhibition highlights a lesser-known aspect of Burri’s oeuvre – one to which he devoted particular care and enthusiasm, approaching it as a sort of laboratory or testing ground for work that would be profoundly innovative in terms of both technique and image. Printmaking brought him into contact with master engravers and printmakers such as Rossi, Ascani (Nuvolo), Remba, Castelli and Baldessarini whose skills helped him achieve results of remarkable technical and artistic value. These experiments bore extraordinary fruit and were acknowledged and honoured by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei who, in 1973, awarded him the Premio Feltrinelli for his contribution to the graphic arts.
In 2017, the Fondazione Burri opened a new section dedicated to Burri’s work as a printmaker at the Museo degli Ex Seccatoi in Città di Castello. This exhibition is Visitamarestudio’s own homage to these extraordinary works of art.
“In Burri’s case, when we talk about graphic art we are talking about work that is no less important than the paintings; it is simply a parallel artistic modality, one that is different in terms of conception and execution. It is as significant an element of the great painter’s oeuvre as all his other revolutionary innovations.”
Bruno Corà, President of the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini, Collezione Burri.
Alberto Burri was born in Città di Castello (Perugia) in 1915. Having graduated in medicine in 1940, he was taken prisoner by the Allied forces in Tunisia. By the time he returned to Italy, in 1946, he had begun to paint, and abandoned medicine for art.
In 1978, at the height of his creative powers, the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri was established at the artist’s behest, in Città di Castello, fulfilling Burri’s desire to donate a substantial number of his works to his home town. He participated in numerous editions of the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Kassel.
His works have been displayed in some of the world’s most important museums, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna e contemporanea in Rome, the Castello di Rivoli (Turin) and the Museo d’arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto. Among the numerous prizes awarded to the artist the AICA/Critics’ prize at the Venice Biennale in 1960, the Premio Marzotto in 1964, the Gran Premio at the São Paolo Bienal in 1965, and the Premio Feltrinelli for graphic art in 1973. Alberto Burri died in Nice on February 13, 1995.