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Lot Essay
“For a long time I wanted to explore how fire consumes, to understand the nature of combustion, and how everything lives and dies in combustion to form a perfect unity.”
-- Alberto Burri
Several years before Yves Klein used fire as an expressive medium, in 1955 Alberto Burri began his famed Combustione series by testing the effects of fire as a means of art. The artist would set paper alight and catch the flaming burnt char in a transparent plastic-like substance. Upon making contact with the fixative material, the flame would extinguish and the scorched and blackened paper would settle into a composition. By 1965, Burri had extended his experiments with flame to other materials including wood, iron, and plastic. It is fitting then that Burri returned to paper through the printed mediums of etching and aquatint to construct Combustione 1-6, in which the process of burning, of turning into ashes, create evocative images of transformation as the material used has been passed through various states of being. The six prints in this complete set defy the convention of paper being read solely in the two dimensional plane, with aquatint used to heighten the ridges and deepen the contrast with the cracked surface. Made without the use of actual flames, Burri’s Combustiones nonetheless communicate all the characteristics of flame—from its incendiary to its emollient qualities, as well as its luminosity, texture and ability transubstantiate one substance into another—that made fire so appealing to the artist. As the art historian Gerald Nordland has written of the artist’s work, “There is an element in Burri’s fire paintings that reaches backwards to primordial feelings and speaks to every person’s experience of watching fire and knowing the danger and pain in burning.” More so, as Harriet Janis and Rudi Blesh write about Burri’s work on paper, “Accident, crisis, and healing are perfectly symbolized in abstract pictorial terms in the combustioni” (H. Janis, R. Blesh and G. Nordland quoted by E. Braun, Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting, ex. Cat., Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2015, p. 182-183).
Produced in association with master printmakers Valter and Eleonora Rossi at their renowned print studio Stamperia d’Arte 2RC in Rome, overcoming technical challenges and with the inventiveness of modern day alchemists, the Rossis elevated the status of printmaking; enabling it to join the ranks of contemporary media through their ability to blur the accepted divisions between two-dimensional and three-dimensional surfaces. The works published by Stamperia d’Arte 2RC demonstrate an absolute understanding of paper, press and colouring, on many occasions pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved by printmaking. This is particularly evident in the numerous collaborations with artists traditionally regarded as sculptors.Thus the Rossi’s were perfect partners for Alberto Burri, who, even when working on paper, did so in such an untraditional way that he confounded two and three-dimensional space.
-- Alberto Burri
Several years before Yves Klein used fire as an expressive medium, in 1955 Alberto Burri began his famed Combustione series by testing the effects of fire as a means of art. The artist would set paper alight and catch the flaming burnt char in a transparent plastic-like substance. Upon making contact with the fixative material, the flame would extinguish and the scorched and blackened paper would settle into a composition. By 1965, Burri had extended his experiments with flame to other materials including wood, iron, and plastic. It is fitting then that Burri returned to paper through the printed mediums of etching and aquatint to construct Combustione 1-6, in which the process of burning, of turning into ashes, create evocative images of transformation as the material used has been passed through various states of being. The six prints in this complete set defy the convention of paper being read solely in the two dimensional plane, with aquatint used to heighten the ridges and deepen the contrast with the cracked surface. Made without the use of actual flames, Burri’s Combustiones nonetheless communicate all the characteristics of flame—from its incendiary to its emollient qualities, as well as its luminosity, texture and ability transubstantiate one substance into another—that made fire so appealing to the artist. As the art historian Gerald Nordland has written of the artist’s work, “There is an element in Burri’s fire paintings that reaches backwards to primordial feelings and speaks to every person’s experience of watching fire and knowing the danger and pain in burning.” More so, as Harriet Janis and Rudi Blesh write about Burri’s work on paper, “Accident, crisis, and healing are perfectly symbolized in abstract pictorial terms in the combustioni” (H. Janis, R. Blesh and G. Nordland quoted by E. Braun, Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting, ex. Cat., Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2015, p. 182-183).
Produced in association with master printmakers Valter and Eleonora Rossi at their renowned print studio Stamperia d’Arte 2RC in Rome, overcoming technical challenges and with the inventiveness of modern day alchemists, the Rossis elevated the status of printmaking; enabling it to join the ranks of contemporary media through their ability to blur the accepted divisions between two-dimensional and three-dimensional surfaces. The works published by Stamperia d’Arte 2RC demonstrate an absolute understanding of paper, press and colouring, on many occasions pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved by printmaking. This is particularly evident in the numerous collaborations with artists traditionally regarded as sculptors.Thus the Rossi’s were perfect partners for Alberto Burri, who, even when working on paper, did so in such an untraditional way that he confounded two and three-dimensional space.