By Emily Braun. Contributions by Megan Fontanella, Carol Stringari.
Published to accompany a major retrospective exhibition--the first in the United States in more than 35 years and the most comprehensive ever mounted--this title showcases the pioneering work of Italian artist Alberto Burri (1915-95). Exploring the beauty and complexity of Burri's process-based works, the exhibition positions the artist as a central and singular protagonist of postwar art. Burri is best known for his series of Sacchi (sacks) made of stitched and patched remnants of torn burlap bags, often combined with fragments of discarded clothing. Far less familiar to American audiences are his other series, which this exhibition represents in depth: Catrami (tars), Gobbi (hunchbacks), Muffe (molds), Bianchi (whites), Legni (woods), Ferri (irons), Combustioni plastiche (plastic combustions), Cretti and Cellotex works. Burri's work both demolished and reconfigured the Western pictorial tradition, while reconceptualizing modernist collage. Using unconventional materials, he moved beyond the painted surfaces and markmaking of American Abstract Expressionism and European Art Informel. Burri's unprecedented approaches to manipulating humble substances--and his abject picture-objects--also profoundly influenced Arte Povera, Neo-Dada and Process art. Alberto Burri was born in Italy in 1915. He first garnered attention in the US in the early 1950s when his work was included in the group exhibition Younger European Painters at the Guggenheim Museum and was also shown at the Frumkin Gallery, Chicago, and at the Stable Gallery, New York. In 1977 a retrospective was presented at the University of California's Frederick S. Wight Gallery, Los Angeles, and traveled to the Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Texas, and the Guggenheim Museum (1978). He died in Nice, France, in 1995.
Featured image is reproduced from Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Essential Homme
[Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting] reveals how the artist succeeded in deconstructing Western ideologies and, in that process, devised a singular language of his own.
The New York Times
Roberta Smith
In a dazzlingly researched, often eloquent catalog essay, Emily Braun, an art historian who oversaw the Guggenheim show, “Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting” (and is also curator of the Leonard A. Lauder Collection of Cubist Art), argues that Burri’s art is a crucial, underacknowledged link in the development of collage and assemblage and helped set the stage for a host of postwar art movements—Neo-Dada, Process Art, Arte Povera and more.
Hyperallergic
John Yau
...the catalogue accompanying the exhibition is a lodestone of information about Burri. Not only has Emily Braun, who supervised this exhibition, unearthed a wealth of information, but she has also written a substantial essay, “The Trauma of Painting,” that is wonderfully absent of academic jargon and hyperbole, making it a pleasure to read.
Dedalus Foundation
Winner of the 2016 Dedalus Foundation Exhibition Catalogue Award
Association of Art Museum Curators
Honorable Mention in the Catalogue/Publication category of institutions with an operating budget over $20 million from the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) and AAMC Foundation’s 2015 Awards for Excellence
Made of burlap, synthetic polymer paint, thread and Vinavil on black fabric, "Sack H 8" (circa 1953) is reproduced from The Trauma of Painting, the comprehensive catalogue to the Alberto Burri show opening today at the Guggenheim. The importance of this exhibition cannot be overstated—it marks the first time the artist's work has been treated to a retrospective in an American museum in more than 35 years; it is also the most comprehensive overview, ever. To quote Giulio Carlo Argan, "Burri's painting is not a painting of symbols, but rather of signs. It is not painting that prefigures or announces something. It is painting that wants to be touched." continue to blog
In 1955, James B. Byrnes, director of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, wrote of Italian artist Alberto Burri (1915-95), "Using his skill as a surgeon he opened wound-like apertures, closed others with a suture, with the result that the material itself took on the character of something physical, now a landscape, then a corpse. The finished work speaks of decay and death, with each wounded canvas itself the subject of operating room activity. Those works which are less physical in intent suggest an aerial view of a pock-marked battlefield." Sack and Gold (1953) is reproduced from the Guggenheim Museum's major new retrospective catalogue. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.75 x 11.5 in. / 280 pgs / 250 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $65.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $75 ISBN: 9780892075232 PUBLISHER: Guggenheim Museum Publications AVAILABLE: 10/27/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Guggenheim Museum Publications. By Emily Braun. Contributions by Megan Fontanella, Carol Stringari.
Published to accompany a major retrospective exhibition--the first in the United States in more than 35 years and the most comprehensive ever mounted--this title showcases the pioneering work of Italian artist Alberto Burri (1915-95). Exploring the beauty and complexity of Burri's process-based works, the exhibition positions the artist as a central and singular protagonist of postwar art. Burri is best known for his series of Sacchi (sacks) made of stitched and patched remnants of torn burlap bags, often combined with fragments of discarded clothing. Far less familiar to American audiences are his other series, which this exhibition represents in depth: Catrami (tars), Gobbi (hunchbacks), Muffe (molds), Bianchi (whites), Legni (woods), Ferri (irons), Combustioni plastiche (plastic combustions), Cretti and Cellotex works.
Burri's work both demolished and reconfigured the Western pictorial tradition, while reconceptualizing modernist collage. Using unconventional materials, he moved beyond the painted surfaces and markmaking of American Abstract Expressionism and European Art Informel. Burri's unprecedented approaches to manipulating humble substances--and his abject picture-objects--also profoundly influenced Arte Povera, Neo-Dada and Process art.
Alberto Burri was born in Italy in 1915. He first garnered attention in the US in the early 1950s when his work was included in the group exhibition Younger European Painters at the Guggenheim Museum and was also shown at the Frumkin Gallery, Chicago, and at the Stable Gallery, New York. In 1977 a retrospective was presented at the University of California's Frederick S. Wight Gallery, Los Angeles, and traveled to the Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Texas, and the Guggenheim Museum (1978). He died in Nice, France, in 1995.
