Alberto Burri (Italian, 1915-1995). "Combustione #1". Mixed media on paper. 1972. Signed and dated, lower right. Condition: some creasing and rippling (incurred while painting was created), else very good. Burri was an Italian abstract painter and sculptor. Early in his career he turned to abstraction and unorthodox materials, making collages with pumice, tar, and burlap, and started a series of canvases that bulged into the 3rd dimension. His work is related to European Tachisme, American Abstract expressionism, and Lyrical Abstraction. In the mid-1950s, Burri began producing charred wood and burlap works, then welded iron sheets. In the early 1960s he was burning plastic, and in the early 1970s started his "cracked" paintings, or cretti. He created a series of works in the industrial material, Cellotex, from 1979 through the 1990s. "Burri's art, so elegant and beautiful to modern eyes, was dramatically subversive in its day. Like Lucio Fontana, his better-known contemporary, Burri was there before arte povera with its humble materials; before Yves Klein with his fire paintings; before Gustav Metzger with his scorched plastic and acid. If he seems more poet than protester, never entirely abandoning canvas, paint and frame, Burri is nonetheless reaching beyond painting's conventional limits to give it a brave new repertoire." [courtesy Laura Cumming]. Overall size: 11 9/16 x 8 1/8 in. (294 x 206 mm). Image size: 9 1/16 x 6 5/8 in. (230 x 168 mm). [27727] |15000| {R100}