Alberto Burri : Waiting for the anniversary

 Ex Seccatoi Tabacco, “Grande Ferro K”, 1982

Alberto Burri was born in Città di Castello (Perugia) on the 12th of March 1915, and his city with the Foundation Burri dedicating to him 2015 with events and exhibitions for the 100th anniversary of his birth. 

Ex Seccatoi Tabacco, Sala E

The Palazzo Albizzini “Collezione Burri” Foundation was created in 1978 by Alberto Burri himself with a first donation of thirty-two works. Its members are people from the Città di Castello Council, the Cassa di Risparmio di Città di Castello, the Associazione per la Tutela dei Monumenti dell'Alta Valle del Tevere and “La Sapienza” University of Rome. It has been recognised by a decree of the President of the “Giunta Regionale dell'Umbria”, Umbria’s Regional Council. The museum was named after the exposition building itself.
The Collection found at Palazzo Albizzini was opened to the public in December 1981 and it includes about a hundred and thirty works completed between 1948 and 1989, chronologically exposed and occupying twenty rooms. Together with the other site, Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco (The Old Tobacco Dryhouses) which opened in July 1990 containing 128 works completed between 1970 and 1993, it is the most exhaustive collection on the artist, with high quality works selected by the painter himself. The Foundation also has: a library, replete with information on modern and contemporary art (accessible to students and scholars following a written request), a photographic archive containing all documentation regarding the works of Alberto Burri and the archive, containing a comprehensive bibliography on the artist.

Ex Seccatoi Tabacco, Sala M

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York is organizing a major retrospective of the work of Alberto Burri to open in the fall of 2015. The Fondazione Burri is in collaboration on this project, as part of its many initiatives marking the artist’s centenary

Ex Seccatoi Tabacco, Sala H
«Alberto Burri’s artistic career lasted for exactly fifty years, from 1945, the year of his first experiments till 1995, the year of his death. His initial training as a figurative painter was short and had already ended by 1947. His abstract work can be divided into two categories: the first is surfaces, irregular and uneven, sometimes steep, underlining life in the various materials (sacks, wood, metals and plastic) with their rough surfaces: the second is more even and smooth, interwoven with colour, that can assume an exclusive role, the pattern of materials: only now is their value recognised for their vibrant tones and not just for the drama of their shape, these are shown more uniform, even if rough or porous. During the seventies a change is distinguishable in the passage from “clefts” to “cellotex”. What does not change is the stillness and wideness of the picture, that sense of space that is always tense and compact. Initially in more tormented forms, after they are smoother and more relaxed, it always expresses the same plastic vigour. The apparition of “sacks” at the start of the fifties triggered an enormous scandal. It was an absolute and disturbing novelty, the following series generated the same disturbance, from wood to plastic, even if the more intuitive press didn’t miss out underlining its’ beauty. As a matter of fact, none of the other pictorial researches of the fifties, in Europe and in the rest of the world, presented more qualitative capacity. From "Percorso di Burri » by Maurizio Calvesi

Esterno Ex Seccatoi Tabacco,  “Ferro U”, 1990

All images are the property of the Foundation Albizzini "Burri Collection"

All information http://www.fondazioneburri.org/