Focus on Burri

1. My wife Roberta and I had the good fortune to meet Alberto Burri in the Umbrian hills towards the end of the 1980s. Another place in which this great artist crosses our own work is at Faenza. The last large ceramic cretto, Nero e Oro, was presented to the Mic – Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in 1993. Back in the 1980s, we had already proposed Burri to our collectors, above all the international ones, who asked our opinion about Italian art. The suggestion to include works by Burri, given the attention received from the cultural scene and from the market that has seen him as one of the leading figures over a number years, has enabled us to consolidate the relationship with important collectors with whom we are still in contact today.

2. He is certainly one of the artists who most contributes to focusing international attention on the artistic scene in Italy after the Second World War. From the point of view of the market, this is evidenced by the leading position the artist holds in the famous Italian Sales held by the major auction houses and, as gallery owners, we constantly come across his work in international art fairs. The attention for this artist will grow even stronger and will draw in an increasingly international public.

BURRI AND GALLERIA MAGGIORE

FROM UMBRIA TO THE COTE D'AZUR VIA FAENZA : THE GALLERIA D'ARTE MAGGIORE'S MANY ENCOUNTERS WITH BURRI

Franco Calarota, president and founder of the Galleria d'Arte Maggiore, discusses his relationship with Alberto Burri, revisiting the places where they met and mixing these memories with some of the most significant moments in the gallery's activities in the 1980s and 1990s.

My wife Roberta and I started frequenting Alberto Burri in the late eighties. At that time, our work was increasingly emerging as a process of a systematic rereading of the historical generations of postwar Italian artists, with a view that was in part operational and leading to a promotion on a more international level than a narrow attention on solely the Italian scene. One of the artists we were focusing most on then was Leoncillo; this was a passion that has never abandoned us, and anyway Città di Castello was a nearby destination, and the visits to Burri a duty and a pleasure. For we who had done much work on the twentieth.century Italian art and made our Morandi our guiding star, Burri was the embodiment of the profound continuity of Italian art of the century, which goes far beyond the external forms and can truly be seen as a “native language”. This is why since then our contacts with the international collecting market have always included Burri and his work. We preferred to select interlocutors throughout the world who know how to look at the soul of the work beyond the fashions of the moment, and who were able to see him as one of the great authentic Italian exponents of twentieth-century art: in short, what Goethe defines the “happy collectors”, not the Gordon Gekkos of art. We are proud to have helped in this way in strengthening the image of Burri in the world. It was with great joy that we then saw up close the birth of the great “Black and Gold” cretto for the international Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, in 1993, at a time that our collaboration with the museum was very intense, with the exhibitions of Arman, Leoncillo, Louis Cane and Louise Nevelson. And it is in the nineties that our meetings with Burri moved to the French Riviera. During that decade, the artist moved to Beaulieu-Sur-Mer to treat his pulmonary emphysema. I used to frequent that wonderful stretch of coast often with my wife, Roberta. We used to go to the Saint Tropez house of the son of Massimo Campigli, Nicola, as we do to this day. We are very fond of this place and where we have been fortunate to establish a deeper working relationship and friendship with Antoni Clavé (now the protagonist of the exhibition that we have organized at the 56^thVenice Biennale at the Scoletta dell'Arte of Tiraoro and Battioro) spending a lot of time in his studio in the company of such people as Pierre Schneider, François Pinault and Roland Petit. In our memories, therefore, the figure of Burri is also associated with a very lively and exciting season in our own activity and with a place that we carry in our hearts. 

Alberto Burri is definetely among the artists who has drawn most international attention with regard to the post-war Italian art scene. From the point of view of the market, this is reflected by the major role that the artist plays in the Italian Sales held by the major auction houses, and his commanding presence in the international art fairs in which we participate, from The Armory Show in New York to Art Basel Hong Kong. Burri has a knowledgeable and refined collector base that recognizes in his works one of the highest expressive and engaging personalities of the twentieth century, and that when a collector acquires a work he considers the choice an intellectual, and long term, decision. His is a case where it is an easy prophecy to predict further consolidation internationally, given that his position in history and his quality are now universally shared and beyond any possible discussion.

In addition to the large sacchi, the combusted plastic and universally known works, I find the Neri made with Cellotex very interesting, because of the process of simplification undertaken by the artist to point of extreme essentialness. The reduction to the simplest forms of expression, the poor, artificial, industrial materials and monochrome fields, in no way limit the communicative power of the works, and I find this yet another sign of the master's greatness.