Alberto Burri

Acquired directly from the artist by present owner in the second half of the 1950s

Rome, Galleria dell’Obelisco, Neri e Muffe, January 1952

Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera, Burri, May – July 1984, p. 35, no. 13, illustrated in colour 

Rubiu Vittorio, Contributo al catalogo generale. Burri, Roma 1963, p. 190, no. 65, illustrated

Carlo Pirovano, Burri, Milan 1984, p. 35, no. 13, illustrated in colour

Bonito Oliva, ‘Il quadro e la cornice’, Il Mondiale, Roma 1990, p. 79, illustrated

Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini, Burri, Catalago Generale, Città di Castello 2015, Vol. I, p. 85, no. 149, illustrated in colour; Vol. VI, p. 47, no. i 514, illustrated in colour (incorrectly described as signed and dated on the reverse)

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate. Condition: Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
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Complexly layered and shrouded with a raw intensity Nero Bianco is an exceptionally early consummation of Alberto Burri’s revolutionary transformation of the concept of painting. Considered one of the most pioneering artists of the post-war era, Burri’s unique artistic methodology and radical appropriation of ‘poor’ materials had a strong influence both in Europe and in America, as was evident in the budding Arte Povera movement, as well as in Robert Rauschenberg’s Combine series. Executed in 1951, Nero Bianco stems from an important early stage in Burri’s career when the artist first began to subversively employ matter as the subject of his painting, looking to the limitless potential of materiality as a vehicle for artistic expression. Rugged landscapes of sumptuous textures, these early works rank amongst the most important of Burri’s seminal artistic practice.

As indicated by its title Nero Bianco is a work of strong tonal divergences and nuanced topography. A conglomeration of the artist’s exploratory material methodology Nero Bianco bears aesthetic reference to several of his most revered series. With its patchwork of earthy colours the work alludes to the material fragments of Burri’s acclaimed Sacchi, whilst its arid areas of white impasto anticipate the measured craquelure of his later Cretto works, whilst the compressed inky black pools anticipate his acclaimed Plastique. Burri employs an agenda of minimal artistic intervention as a means of exposing the primary naturalness of materiality. This reductive autonomy stands in correlation to the contemporaneous work of Lucio Fontana, whilst inspiring and pre-figuring Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani in their quest for a dematerialization of the artwork as substantive of the real.  In this respect Burri's work, alongside that of Fontana, can be posited as the most radical of the 1950s in Italy; combining formal composition and random processes to bridge the generation of the Informel to the 1960s innovation of Arte Povera.

Post-war art of the 1950s and ‘60s was characterised by a preoccupation with the horrors of the Second World War and by a generation of artists who sought resolution in the primacy of individual expression, focusing on texture and gestural tension. Burri’s artistic development began during his detainment in a prisoner of war camp in the United States from 1944-1945, after practicing medicine as an officer in the Italian Army. After returning he traded his medical profession for that of a painter.

Reaching a perfect equilibrium between the sensuality of texture and the balance of composition, the present work epitomises Burri's revolutionary methodology and reassessment of the traditional rules of painting.  An exceptionally early composite of his most celebrated and important work, Nero Bianco stands as a work of pivotal innovation within the highly acclaimed oeuvre of Alberto Burri.