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Lot Essay
Alberto Burri was one of the prime pioneers of Italian art in the second half of the Twentieth Century, and one of the forums in which his incredible innovations were most evident was his use of fire. In Combustione, which was created in 1964 and which has remained in the same private collection since it was acquired directly from Burri himself, this trailblazing development is clear to see: the artist has used fire to burn through some transparent plastic, showing it against a white-painted panel.
The charring of the plastic and the smoke itself have conspired to create a pattern of blacks and greys that contrasts with the starker white background, recalling the impression made by the pictures of the Abstract Expressionist, Franz Kline. There is a near-calligraphic quality to the loops, bridges and creases of the plastic and its burnt areas. This reveals Burri's own incredible control of his materials, despite the extent to which fire will do as it wills. Burri would apply his flame, usually using an oxyacetylene blowtorch, but would also make sure that he controlled the forms that were created using this technique, damping down the flames before they spread too far, consuming his material. Intriguingly, Milton Gendel, in his 1954 article on Burri, had explained that the artist often took the advice of the scientists among his friends; this would appear to have been the case in his use of fire, which by the mid-1960s, when Combustione was created, was one of the prime weapons in his aesthetic arsenal (see Milton Gendel, 'Burri Makes a Picture', ArtNews, December 1954, reproduced at www.miltongendel.com).
Burri's first works involving flames, his initial Combustione pictures, were apparently inspired in part by a visit to an oilfield with Emilio Villa, the poet with whom he collaborated and who also wrote on his art (see Alberto Burri: A Retrospective View 1948-77, exh.cat., Los Angeles, 1977, p. 43). Within a short amount of time, fire had become one of the key techniques that he used to create his works. This was a contrast to the stitching that had been employed in his Sacchi: where the sewing of the canvas elements had been interpreted as a form of mending, hinting at rehabilitation, fire appears to be a destructive force. Instead of bringing about the reincarnation of his materials, salvaging them from the scrap pile, fire heralds their doom, albeit partial. In Combustione, this is evident in the chasms that gape in the centre of the composition, where the plastic has been burnt away, leaving a void, a portal through which one sees the background. However, in using fire to make Combustione, Burri has managed to turn it towards a more rehabilitating use, turning this force of destruction onto one of creation.
Through Burri's incorporation of fire, Combustione becomes a meditation upon presence and absence - and disappearance. After all, Burri's use of fire provides a striking contrast to the more usual means of creation employed by painters, often involving paint and brushes. Where Jackson Pollock had broken free of the canvas with his dripping, Burri has gone a step further, deliberately and partially destroying the work itself. Yet this destruction is designed to bring about a new understanding of the material itself: the process of transformation brought about by the use of fire increases our appreciation of the qualities of the plastic which has been submitted to it. Thus, the humble plastic which was becoming increasingly endemic during the 1960s has been transformed by Burri's hand, rising phoenix-like to become a work of art, having its own beauty celebrated.
In this, Combustione can be seen to capture a fleeting moment. That passing second in which the fire tore through the plastic has been crystallised. Even the tint that some of the plastic has acquired in the process appears to contain the traces of the smoke that was cast off in that moment of combustion. As Emilio Villa would say, the year before the Combustioni which were inspired by his visit to an oil field with the artist, '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).
This ephemeral aspect in Combustione links him to his compatriot Lucio Fontana, another pioneer of the use of materials in painting. It also relates to the French artist Yves Klein, who adopted the use of fire several years after Burri, often treating the surfaces of his works so that they would be flame-retardant, leading to a variety of patterns. Burri may not have been the first artist to use fire in his works, at least applying it as a technique, yet his insistence on its centrality in Combustione and its sister works shows a marked shift. Burri's use of fire marked a moment of transition as it shifted from being merely part of the medium to being the centre of the message. This was continued in Klein's works, which often feature scorch-marks upon the paper surface, as opposed to the open 'combustion' enshrined in Burri's. Yet they share, in many ways, a similar aesthetic in terms of composition and the use of the 'palette' left by the fire itself: Klein's works often vary, with browns and sepias, yet essentially play upon a similar black-and-white colour scheme to that employed in Combustione and a number of its fellow works.
The charring of the plastic and the smoke itself have conspired to create a pattern of blacks and greys that contrasts with the starker white background, recalling the impression made by the pictures of the Abstract Expressionist, Franz Kline. There is a near-calligraphic quality to the loops, bridges and creases of the plastic and its burnt areas. This reveals Burri's own incredible control of his materials, despite the extent to which fire will do as it wills. Burri would apply his flame, usually using an oxyacetylene blowtorch, but would also make sure that he controlled the forms that were created using this technique, damping down the flames before they spread too far, consuming his material. Intriguingly, Milton Gendel, in his 1954 article on Burri, had explained that the artist often took the advice of the scientists among his friends; this would appear to have been the case in his use of fire, which by the mid-1960s, when Combustione was created, was one of the prime weapons in his aesthetic arsenal (see Milton Gendel, 'Burri Makes a Picture', ArtNews, December 1954, reproduced at www.miltongendel.com).
Burri's first works involving flames, his initial Combustione pictures, were apparently inspired in part by a visit to an oilfield with Emilio Villa, the poet with whom he collaborated and who also wrote on his art (see Alberto Burri: A Retrospective View 1948-77, exh.cat., Los Angeles, 1977, p. 43). Within a short amount of time, fire had become one of the key techniques that he used to create his works. This was a contrast to the stitching that had been employed in his Sacchi: where the sewing of the canvas elements had been interpreted as a form of mending, hinting at rehabilitation, fire appears to be a destructive force. Instead of bringing about the reincarnation of his materials, salvaging them from the scrap pile, fire heralds their doom, albeit partial. In Combustione, this is evident in the chasms that gape in the centre of the composition, where the plastic has been burnt away, leaving a void, a portal through which one sees the background. However, in using fire to make Combustione, Burri has managed to turn it towards a more rehabilitating use, turning this force of destruction onto one of creation.
Through Burri's incorporation of fire, Combustione becomes a meditation upon presence and absence - and disappearance. After all, Burri's use of fire provides a striking contrast to the more usual means of creation employed by painters, often involving paint and brushes. Where Jackson Pollock had broken free of the canvas with his dripping, Burri has gone a step further, deliberately and partially destroying the work itself. Yet this destruction is designed to bring about a new understanding of the material itself: the process of transformation brought about by the use of fire increases our appreciation of the qualities of the plastic which has been submitted to it. Thus, the humble plastic which was becoming increasingly endemic during the 1960s has been transformed by Burri's hand, rising phoenix-like to become a work of art, having its own beauty celebrated.
In this, Combustione can be seen to capture a fleeting moment. That passing second in which the fire tore through the plastic has been crystallised. Even the tint that some of the plastic has acquired in the process appears to contain the traces of the smoke that was cast off in that moment of combustion. As Emilio Villa would say, the year before the Combustioni which were inspired by his visit to an oil field with the artist, '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).
This ephemeral aspect in Combustione links him to his compatriot Lucio Fontana, another pioneer of the use of materials in painting. It also relates to the French artist Yves Klein, who adopted the use of fire several years after Burri, often treating the surfaces of his works so that they would be flame-retardant, leading to a variety of patterns. Burri may not have been the first artist to use fire in his works, at least applying it as a technique, yet his insistence on its centrality in Combustione and its sister works shows a marked shift. Burri's use of fire marked a moment of transition as it shifted from being merely part of the medium to being the centre of the message. This was continued in Klein's works, which often feature scorch-marks upon the paper surface, as opposed to the open 'combustion' enshrined in Burri's. Yet they share, in many ways, a similar aesthetic in terms of composition and the use of the 'palette' left by the fire itself: Klein's works often vary, with browns and sepias, yet essentially play upon a similar black-and-white colour scheme to that employed in Combustione and a number of its fellow works.