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Lot Essay
Composizione was painted in 1953, an annus mirabilis for Alberto Burri, one of the greatest and most important figures in post-war Italian painting whose works would come to have huge implications in his native country and far beyond. This picture is filled with materiality: the paint has been treated in such a way that the rhythmic forms that articulate this large, vertical canvas serve as a demonstration of the versatility of the medium. Here, the canvas is shown peeking through, there hints of an underlying geometry appear. Meanwhile, textures are explored be it through the gestural swirls of white paint, some of it shown in relief on a field of white, or in the use of craquelure which would later be captured to such great effect in Burri's Cretti. Looking at Composizione, the painting's structure clearly shares the formal underpinning sense of rhythm which had characterised Burri's early abstract paintings and which, by the time this picture was created, extended to his collage works involving sacking. And like those works, this picture explores texture and material. Where in his Sacchi or Plastiche, Burri introduced materials not usually associated with art in order to represent themselves, here he has explored the very nature and potentiality of paint. And he has done so in a variety of manners, some of them recalling the works of his contemporaries in the United States, the Abstract Expressionists.
While Burri's work did not relate to the Abstract Expressionists, and while he shared few of their concerns, he was nonetheless reacting, like Jackson Pollock in his 'drip' paintings, to the received hegemonies. This was a time of revolutionary thinking. Burri, like Pollock, was willing to abandon the paint brush and to introduce other, more novel techniques that would allow a continued investigation - and celebration - of the nature of paint. Process appears to have been key in Composizione, as it was with the Action Painters. Certainly, looking at this picture, the viewer understands Emilio Villa's comments, made during the same year that Composizione was created, that:
'For each of these paintings, always a bit unexpected, we can always say: this is a work could only have been done today, this is an action that could only have been performed today, not yesterday and not tomorrow' (Emilio Villa, 1953, quoted in G. Serafini, Burri: The Measure and the Phenomenon, Milan, 1999, p. 141).
Perhaps it was this parallel with his American contemporaries that led to 1953, when Composizione was painted, being such an important year for Burri. For it was during this time that he was recognised and increasingly promoted by the veteran curator and museum director James Johnson Sweeney. He was granted a one-man show in the Frumkin Gallery in Chicago that year, as well as participating in several other shows. And crucially, it was in 1953 that the young American artist Robert Rauschenberg made his pilgrimages to Burri's studio, an encounter that many people consider to have been seminal to the rest of his career. Certainly, looking at the intense painterly quality and potent objecthood of Composizione, one can see a parallel with, say, Raushcenberg's famous vertical painting Bed, created two years later.
While Burri's work did not relate to the Abstract Expressionists, and while he shared few of their concerns, he was nonetheless reacting, like Jackson Pollock in his 'drip' paintings, to the received hegemonies. This was a time of revolutionary thinking. Burri, like Pollock, was willing to abandon the paint brush and to introduce other, more novel techniques that would allow a continued investigation - and celebration - of the nature of paint. Process appears to have been key in Composizione, as it was with the Action Painters. Certainly, looking at this picture, the viewer understands Emilio Villa's comments, made during the same year that Composizione was created, that:
'For each of these paintings, always a bit unexpected, we can always say: this is a work could only have been done today, this is an action that could only have been performed today, not yesterday and not tomorrow' (Emilio Villa, 1953, quoted in G. Serafini, Burri: The Measure and the Phenomenon, Milan, 1999, p. 141).
Perhaps it was this parallel with his American contemporaries that led to 1953, when Composizione was painted, being such an important year for Burri. For it was during this time that he was recognised and increasingly promoted by the veteran curator and museum director James Johnson Sweeney. He was granted a one-man show in the Frumkin Gallery in Chicago that year, as well as participating in several other shows. And crucially, it was in 1953 that the young American artist Robert Rauschenberg made his pilgrimages to Burri's studio, an encounter that many people consider to have been seminal to the rest of his career. Certainly, looking at the intense painterly quality and potent objecthood of Composizione, one can see a parallel with, say, Raushcenberg's famous vertical painting Bed, created two years later.