VENICE.- The Fondazione Giorgio Cini presents a landmark survey show dedicated to Alberto Burri (1915 - 1995). This exhibition constitutes the final chapter of a series of international exhibitions and events staged to celebrate the avant-garde Italian artist over the course of the past year.

Curated by Bruno Corà, President of the Fondazione Alberto Burri, and organised with the Fondazione Burri and in collaboration with Tornabuoni Art and Paola Sapone MCIA, in partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo, the exhibition chronologically covers the many important facets of Burri’s artistic output and includes a number of masterpieces belonging to each phase of the artist’s career – from the incredibly rare Catrami series, starting in 1948, to the final Cellotex works from 1994. The show presents around 50 masterpieces on loan from important museums in Italy and abroad, from the Fondazione Burri and from prestigious private collections. Significantly, the Fondazione Burri, in the artist’s hometown of Città di Castello, Umbria, is lending many major works from its collection for the first time, creating a fuller picture of the artist than has previously been seen. Together, these works span the entire length of Burri’s career as one of the most important figures in the Post-War art of the 20th century. The show is also somewhat of a homecoming for Burri, whose work was last shown in Venice in 1983, when the former Cantieri Navali on the island of Giudecca played host to 18 examples from Burri’s cycle of works entitled Sestante, or ‘Sextants’.

Viewers will have the privilege of seeing a unique grouping of his most important works, many of which have never been seen before - from the rare first series of works titled Catrami (‘Tars’, from 1948) and Muffe (‘Moulds’, from 1948), presented in conversation with his iconic Sacchi (‘Sacks’, from 1949-50) and the Gobbi (‘Hunchbacks’, from 1950), all the way through to the seductive Combustioni (‘Combustions’, from the 1960s), the Legni (‘Woods’, from 1955), the Ferri (‘Irons’ from 1958), the contorted Plastiche (‘Plastics’, from the 1960s) and the extraordinary evolution of the Cretti (‘Cracks’, from the 1970s), which, with the Sacchi and Plastiche, became perhaps one of his most recognisable series of works, and ending with the large-scale and colourful Cellotex works, which he made up until the mid 1990s. This show proposes a holistic and meaningful analysis of the way in which this pioneer of contemporary art of the second half of the 20th century tackled the central theme that underlies his entire oeuvre: the transformative use of materials, or ‘matter’, into art.

“Just over a quarter of a century following his death, in 1995, this show will shine a light on the radical transformation that Burri brought to the art of the 20th century,” says Bruno Corà, curator of the show and President of the Fondazione Burri, who continues:

“The revolution Burri brought to art by engaging with a systematic presentation of material as the subject matter itself, rather than using it as a tool for representation, is arguably as important as when Giotto abandoned the stylised gold skies of Mediaeval art and began to paint it blue, just as it appeared in nature. What brings these two innovators together is the introduction of something ‘real’ in lieu of imitation. The absolute shock of Burri’s work in the years that followed WWII can be measured in terms of the quantity of art and artists that he clearly influenced, from the New Dada of Rauschenberg, Johns e Dine, to the Nouveau Réalisme of Klein and Rotella, the Arte Povera of Pistoletto, Kounellis, Pascali and Calzolari, as well as process-based art and monochromatic neominimalism.”

Highlights of the show at the Fondazione Cini include some large Sacchi works from 1952, each one around 2.5m wide, which Rauschenberg is known to have seen in Burri’s studio in 1953, while he was preparing for his own show, titled ‘Boxes and Fetishes’, at the Galleria dell’Obelisco in Rome. Rauschenberg’s visit to Burri’s studio had such a profound effect on him that it changed the way he made art, and in 1954 he began his famous Combine Paintings, which show obvious influences taken from Burri’s own work. This show also includes a cycle of very important Plastiche and Cretti works, as well as a monumental Cellotex from 1979, measuring almost 3m x 4m.

The work of Alberto Burri has received increasing international attention in the past years, consecrating him as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. In 2015, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York presented a survey show which then travelled to the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K21 Ständehaus in Düsseldorf, while the Fondazione Burri itself hosted a major exhibition in Città di Castello (in the province of Perugia).

This exhibition is complemented by a multimedia archive, including never-beforeseen film footage of the artist at work. A bilingual catalogue (Italian-English) with introductions by the curator Bruno Corà, President of the Fondazione Burri, and Luca Massimo Barbero, Director of the Institute of Art History at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, proves to be a useful tool in the study of Burri’s work and will also include an updated bibliography. The exhibition has been designed by the architect Tiziano Sarteanesi.

Tornabuoni Art is the leading international gallery of Italian post-war art and works with public and private collections world-wide in this field, through its galleries in London, Paris, Florence, Milan and Switzerland. Close relationships with the foundations that represent the artists and with the authors of their catalogues raisonnés have enabled the gallery to mount important exhibitions and publish numerous scholarly catalogues in collaboration with Forma Edizioni, Florence. Tornabuoni Art is proud to return to Venice to help organise this exhibition with the Fondazione Cini, following their successful collaboration on the exhibition ‘Alighiero Boetti: Minimum/Maximum’ at the Fondazione Cini in 2017, with Agata Boetti and the Boetti Archive.

Paola Sapone is the Director of Monte Carlo International Art (MCIA), a gallery specialised in European 20th-century art. She continues the work of the Sapone Gallery, founded by her father Antonio Sapone, a close friend of Burri who represented the artist. Today Paola Sapone continues to promote Burri's work and the importance of the Alberto Burri Foundation.

Intesa Sanpaolo, as part of its Culture Project, a three-year plan of cultural initiatives, is supporting this exhibition both as a sponsor and as a lender of two works from its collection. These important pieces by Burri are Sabbia (1952) and Rosso nero (1953), and form part of the bank’s collecting programme ‘Works from the 1900s’, a collection dedicated to promoting 20th- and 21st-century art and based in the bank’s museum in Milan, the Gallerie d’Italia. It is particularly relevant for Intesa Sanpaolo to show these works in this exhibition, during the Venice Biennale, which provides an occasion to highlight their importance and value to the wider world of art.