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Lot Essay
Unveiled in Alberto Burri’s solo exhibition at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh in 1957, and widely exhibited since, the present work is a sumptuous example of his Sacchi (Sacks). Originally held in the artist’s personal collection, it takes its place at the pinnacle of his most important and influential series. Forged from raw swathes of burlap sacking, torn, ripped and stitched back together, this ground-breaking cycle of works revolutionised the landscape of post-war painting, both in Europe and America. Against a cavernous dark backdrop, the present work transforms its humble medium into a complex, mesmerising terrain. At once painterly and sculptural, the fabric is punctured by great gaping holes, evocative of the flame-torched Combustione (Combustions) that Burri began to produce that year. The curator Michel Bépoix described it as a ‘superb example’ of the artist’s emotive use of black, while the scholar Francesco Tedeschi hailed it as a work of the ‘highest quality’. It is a bold, theatrical instance of a language that spoke evocatively to a wounded world, and offered hope for its healing.
Created largely between 1950 and 1956, the Sacchi were among Burri’s earliest major works. They were deeply connected to his experience of the Second World War, in which he had served as an army doctor before being held at a prisoner of war camp in Hereford, Texas. Burlap was rife during the conflict: a strong all-purpose material that was used to carry supplies, camouflage vehicles and build tents. During his internment, Burri began to explore its artistic potential, initially using it like a canvas upon which to paint. After returning to Italy, however, he began to collage pieces together, effectively transforming the support into the artwork itself. Burlap was not a new medium: artists such as Paul Klee and Joan Miró had occasionally utilised the commercially-produced variety in place of linen. Burri’s works, however, drew upon used, worn scraps, which he salvaged directly from the mill in Città di Castello. The illusionistic space of the canvas had vanished: in its place was something real, with its own story to tell.
Conversant with examples held in museums worldwide—including the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf—the present work is situated at the peak of the series. By this stage, Burri’s method had reached extraordinary levels of ambition and sophistication, fuelled by a deep sensitivity to the texture, weave and behaviour of burlap. Here, as in many of the Sacchi, the artist has used a black textile underlayer which gapes through the sackcloth’s apertures, conjuring the buchi (‘holes’) of Lucio Fontana. Working on the floor, Burri alternated between the front and back of the picture plane, by turns ripping and repairing. The artist, a former surgeon, was skilled at stitching: his neighbours, according to one critic, referred to him as ‘The Tailor’. In the present work, his rough-hewn needlework weaves across the surface with the dexterity of drawn lines, each thread alive with rhythmic vitality. The burlap, meanwhile, undulates like thick impasto, twisting and turning in rhapsodic formations. The entire composition is veiled in a sense of Baroque elegance and drama, its worn fibres transfigured into a spectacle of sublime beauty.
By the time of the present work, Burri was making waves in the international art world. In 1955, he mounted his first solo museum exhibition at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, along with his second show at the Stable Gallery in New York. That year, he also participated in the landmark group exhibition The New Decade at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Buoyed by his success in the States, along with his marriage to the American dancer Minsa Craig, Burri would spend increasing amounts of time across the Atlantic. While his Sacchi resonated strongly with contemporary developments in Europe, chiming with the currents of Art Informel and anticipating the evolution of Italian Arte Povera, they also found much in common with the work of American artists during this period. Robert Rauschenberg, in particular—whom Burri visited during this period—was beginning to explore the properties of everyday substances, both in his Combines and in his ‘black paintings’. The present work’s rich, abstract textures, meanwhile, prompt comparison with the gestural surfaces of Abstract Expressionism, which similarly sought to rid the canvas of all figurative allusion.
While the Sacchi were avowedly anti-representational, critics have drawn parallels between their sumptuous chiaroscuro textures and the rich, velvety surfaces of the Old Master paintings that Burri was exposed to during his upbringing in Umbria. In his youth he had regularly cycled to Monterchi to visit Piero della Francesca’s Madonna del Parto (1455-65), as well as immersing himself in the frescoes of Arezzi, Assisi and Sansepolcro. As the curator Emily Braun details, his friend and former lover Sandra Blow recalls how the artist would regularly point of the ‘abstract elements’ of these Renaissance masterworks, highlighting the ‘mobile folds’ of the drapery ‘scrunched and tucked by laces’ (S. Blow, quoted in E. Braun, Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting, exh. cat. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 2015, p. 41). The present work, with its dark, gaping voids, is particularly evocative of works by Caravaggio, including The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (1602) and Saint Francis in Prayer (1602-1604).
Burri had witnessed first-hand the carnage of the Second World War, and the rubble it left behind. Despite refuting all symbolic associations, the Sacchi nonetheless emerged as profound symbols of their time. ‘Every patch in the sacking’, wrote the critic Herbert Read, ‘every gaping wound-like hole, the charred edges and rugged cicatrices, reveal the raw sensibility of an artist outraged by the hypocrisy of a society that presumes to speak of beauty, tradition, humanism, justice and other fine virtues’ (H. Read, quoted in M. Duranti, Alberto Burri: Form and Matter, exh. cat. Estorick Collection, London 2012, p. 5). The present work is riddled with scars, punctures and violations; in the years that followed, Burri would begin to set fire to his materials, torching their surfaces into oblivion. From destruction, however, came hope. His sackcloth, though torn and bruised, is reborn as a site of profound creative potential: a vision of salvation, restoration and transcendence for a new generation.
Created largely between 1950 and 1956, the Sacchi were among Burri’s earliest major works. They were deeply connected to his experience of the Second World War, in which he had served as an army doctor before being held at a prisoner of war camp in Hereford, Texas. Burlap was rife during the conflict: a strong all-purpose material that was used to carry supplies, camouflage vehicles and build tents. During his internment, Burri began to explore its artistic potential, initially using it like a canvas upon which to paint. After returning to Italy, however, he began to collage pieces together, effectively transforming the support into the artwork itself. Burlap was not a new medium: artists such as Paul Klee and Joan Miró had occasionally utilised the commercially-produced variety in place of linen. Burri’s works, however, drew upon used, worn scraps, which he salvaged directly from the mill in Città di Castello. The illusionistic space of the canvas had vanished: in its place was something real, with its own story to tell.
Conversant with examples held in museums worldwide—including the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf—the present work is situated at the peak of the series. By this stage, Burri’s method had reached extraordinary levels of ambition and sophistication, fuelled by a deep sensitivity to the texture, weave and behaviour of burlap. Here, as in many of the Sacchi, the artist has used a black textile underlayer which gapes through the sackcloth’s apertures, conjuring the buchi (‘holes’) of Lucio Fontana. Working on the floor, Burri alternated between the front and back of the picture plane, by turns ripping and repairing. The artist, a former surgeon, was skilled at stitching: his neighbours, according to one critic, referred to him as ‘The Tailor’. In the present work, his rough-hewn needlework weaves across the surface with the dexterity of drawn lines, each thread alive with rhythmic vitality. The burlap, meanwhile, undulates like thick impasto, twisting and turning in rhapsodic formations. The entire composition is veiled in a sense of Baroque elegance and drama, its worn fibres transfigured into a spectacle of sublime beauty.
By the time of the present work, Burri was making waves in the international art world. In 1955, he mounted his first solo museum exhibition at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, along with his second show at the Stable Gallery in New York. That year, he also participated in the landmark group exhibition The New Decade at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Buoyed by his success in the States, along with his marriage to the American dancer Minsa Craig, Burri would spend increasing amounts of time across the Atlantic. While his Sacchi resonated strongly with contemporary developments in Europe, chiming with the currents of Art Informel and anticipating the evolution of Italian Arte Povera, they also found much in common with the work of American artists during this period. Robert Rauschenberg, in particular—whom Burri visited during this period—was beginning to explore the properties of everyday substances, both in his Combines and in his ‘black paintings’. The present work’s rich, abstract textures, meanwhile, prompt comparison with the gestural surfaces of Abstract Expressionism, which similarly sought to rid the canvas of all figurative allusion.
While the Sacchi were avowedly anti-representational, critics have drawn parallels between their sumptuous chiaroscuro textures and the rich, velvety surfaces of the Old Master paintings that Burri was exposed to during his upbringing in Umbria. In his youth he had regularly cycled to Monterchi to visit Piero della Francesca’s Madonna del Parto (1455-65), as well as immersing himself in the frescoes of Arezzi, Assisi and Sansepolcro. As the curator Emily Braun details, his friend and former lover Sandra Blow recalls how the artist would regularly point of the ‘abstract elements’ of these Renaissance masterworks, highlighting the ‘mobile folds’ of the drapery ‘scrunched and tucked by laces’ (S. Blow, quoted in E. Braun, Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting, exh. cat. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 2015, p. 41). The present work, with its dark, gaping voids, is particularly evocative of works by Caravaggio, including The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (1602) and Saint Francis in Prayer (1602-1604).
Burri had witnessed first-hand the carnage of the Second World War, and the rubble it left behind. Despite refuting all symbolic associations, the Sacchi nonetheless emerged as profound symbols of their time. ‘Every patch in the sacking’, wrote the critic Herbert Read, ‘every gaping wound-like hole, the charred edges and rugged cicatrices, reveal the raw sensibility of an artist outraged by the hypocrisy of a society that presumes to speak of beauty, tradition, humanism, justice and other fine virtues’ (H. Read, quoted in M. Duranti, Alberto Burri: Form and Matter, exh. cat. Estorick Collection, London 2012, p. 5). The present work is riddled with scars, punctures and violations; in the years that followed, Burri would begin to set fire to his materials, torching their surfaces into oblivion. From destruction, however, came hope. His sackcloth, though torn and bruised, is reborn as a site of profound creative potential: a vision of salvation, restoration and transcendence for a new generation.