Alba dedicates two exhibitions to Alberto Burri, from the Catrami to Gibellina's Grande Cretto

The Ferrero Foundation in Alba presents a new exhibition project dedicated to one of the great protagonists of the 20th century, Alberto Burri (Città di Castello, 1915 - Nice, 1995). Burri. The Poetry of Matter, this is the title of the exhibition curated by Bruno Corà, president of the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, presents forty-five works by the celebrated artist, including works of large ddimensions, in an installation designed specifically for the spaces of the Ferrero Foundation.

The works on display cover a time span from 1945, with the first Catrami (1948), to the last works Gold and Black dated 1993. Also present are Burri’s early works belonging to the cycles of “tars,” “molds,” “sacks,” “combustions,” “woods,” “irons,” “plastics,” “cretti,” and “cellotex,” works fundamental to contemporary painting that bear the name of the materials that the artist from Città di Castello used, transforming them into masterpieces.

“The title of the exhibition, Burri. The Poetry of Matter,” said Bruno Corà,“must be taken literally. It is by no means just another generic invitation to consider the decisive importance of matter in Burri’s poetics. Instead, we propose visitors to the Alba exhibition to witness an investigation in fieri into the very close relationship, not only on the level of aesthetic fruition, but authentically structural, constitutive, between the work of Alberto Burri and the word in verse, the great poetry of the twentieth century and beyond.”

Emphasizing the relationship between Burri and poetry, the exhibition aims to reflect on the material, understood as an inexhaustible source of experimentation in a total freedom of approach to the making of painting, a generator of constantly evolving creative processes. The artist’s work is observed as a laboratory of incessant experimentation that anticipated, with its research based on linguistic redevelopment, many of the issues that affected the artistic currents of the 1960s, such as Nouveau Réalisme, Arte povera, Arte neuminimale or Fluxus.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by Skira, edited by Bruno Corà, with critical and scholarly contributions by Corà, José Jiménez, Thierry Dufrêne, Petra Richter, and Mario Diacono, including a rich iconographic documentation of the works, biographical apparatus accompanied by a selected critical anthology, and the exhibition project.

Burri. The Poetry of Matter has received the Medal of the President of the Republic and is produced with the support of Compagnia di San Paolo, under the patronage of the City of Alba and with the participation of the Galleria Civica di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea of Turin.

Parallel to the exhibition at the Ferrero Foundation, another exhibition aimed at further learning about Burri’s poetics is also being held in the city center of Alba, in the exhibition spaces of Palazzo Banca d’Alba. Burri. Il Cretto di Gibellina, curated by Bruno Corà, Tiziano Sarteanesi and Stefano Valeri, is dedicated to the land art and site-specific work that the artist created in Gibellina, the Sicilian town destroyed by the Belice earthquake in 1968, transforming it into a symbol of aesthetic rebirth. The Umbrian master, between 1985 and 1989 conceived and initiated the composition of Grande Cretto (completed in 2015), using white concrete to encompass and transform the irretrievable rubble of the old town into an ideal shroud facing the memory of the tragic event. Thus takes shape a work among the largest in the world at 80,000 square meters wide.

Burri. The Poetry of Matter and Burri. The Cretto of Gibellina are both promoted by the Ferrero Foundation in collaboration with the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri and open to the public free of charge from Saturday, October 9, 2021 to Sunday, January 30, 2022.

Pictured is the Great Cretto of Gibellina.

Alba dedicates two exhibitions to Alberto Burri, from the Catrami to Gibellina's Grande Cretto

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