LONDON.- The greatest work by Alberto Burri ever to appear at auction - a blood-red masterpiece from his most sought-after Sacchi series, that recalls the horrors of the Second World War - will be offered for sale at Sotheby’s London on 10 February 2016 with an estimate of £9-12 million ($13.6-18.1m).

After returning from an American Prisoner of War camp to find Italy in ruins in 1946, Burri felt he could not return to his pre-war career as a doctor. He turned instead to art to express his reaction to the devastation, and embarked on his Sacchi series of works, identifiable by their use of burlap - a material that had been ubiquitous during the war, and laden with significance for anybody who had lived through those tumultuous years.

Of unrivalled quality, this example from 1959 is one of the very last Sacchi executed by the artist, and the largest of the fifteen Sacco e Rosso he produced. They are prized as much for their scarcity as for their coarse tactile beauty; another version is held in the permanent collection of the Tate Modern.

“Building on momentum from the great results we saw for Burri in October, we have absolute confidence in this work. Sacco e Rosso is an undeniable masterpiece . T here’ s a real hunger for works of this quality . ” – Cheyenne Westphal, Co-Head of Contemporary Art Worldwide at Sotheby’s.

When Sacco e Rosso last appeared at auction in 2007, the work achieved a then record price of £1.9 million ($3.8 million), and it is now poised to make a new record once again. Continuing the extremely buoyant market for Italian art, Sacco e Rosso ’s appearance at auction will undoubtedly mirror the world-record results achieved for works by the artistic peers of Alberto Burri – Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni.*

Sacco e Rosso arrives at auction with a notable exhibition history, encompassing the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and culminating at the Solomon R. Guggenheim’s landmark Alberto Burri retrospective in the autumn of 2015.

Burri & World War II
Although Burri volunteered for the military in 1935, he had spent most of the Second World War in America, having been captured by the allied troops and imprisoned in Texas. Thus, it wasn’t until he returned to Naples in 1946 that he experienced the horrors that conflict had inflicted upon the country of his birth: gutted apartment blocks, charred black with smoke, Renaissance churches, stripped of their facades and reduced to rubble, and thousands of people, homeless and starving.

Burri had trained as a surgeon before the war, and was a military doctor before he was captured, but felt he could not turn to his pre-war career. He turned instead to art; what had started as a prison hobby – a leisure activity that was allowed by his captors – now became a vocation. From this point onwards, he immersed himself in the creation of extraordinarily powerful paintings such as the present work; they were the only medium through which he was able to comprehend the horrific trauma that his life and country had undergone.

“Sacco e Rosso” in depth
Material: Burlap was an incredibly important material for Burri – his earliest works, made while still imprisoned in Texas, had even used stretched burlap as a support. The material had been universally used during the war, deployed in tents, supply sacks, and sandbags, even woven in strips through camouflage netting.

Stitching: The only trace of artistic gesture in this work appears in the lines of stitching that meander across the panel. Burri was extremely adept with needle and thread and was even known by some as ‘The Tailor’. He had been regularly required to sew in the army, to maintain and repair his kit. However, in the stitching of the present work, we are more readily compelled to recall his surgical training. In the context of post-war Italy, desperately trying to recover and frantically repairing its myriad societal wounds, this is a message of overwhelming poignancy.

Palette: The limited palette of this work, loaded with symbolism is characteristic of Burri. Red denotes passion, fervour, rage, and blood, while black recalls soot, and char, and suffuses the composition with a melancholic mood. These colours and their associations abounded in post-war Italy, but in art-historical terms, they have wider significance.

Art Historical References: In deploying a palette of red, black, and matte burlap gold, Burri paid homage to the Italian altarpieces of the quattrocento and trecento. Particularly in the Sacchi series, Burri’s use of cloth can be compared to the expressive use of drapery in Renaissance painting. There are also influences from the Baroque period: the coarse texture of burlap recalls the tactility of works by Jusepe de Ribera, while the stark contrast between colours seems to make reference to the chromatic brilliance of Caravaggio.

This work acknowledges the tragedies of the first half of the twentieth century, but also, through a bold simplicity of palette and a subtle evocation of Renaissance drapery, quietly reminds its viewer of a time when Italian culture and society was great.

*Auction Record for Manzoni = £12.6m / $20.3m (set October 2014)

*Auction Record for Fontana = £19.4m / $29.1m (set November 2015)