Alberto Burri

Acquired by the father of the present owner directly from the artist in the late 1970s

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is visible under ultraviolet light.
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Created in 1975, five years after the inception of Alberto Burri’s Cretti series, Nero Cretto is a work of intriguing allure which exerts a powerful impact on the viewer. Inky black in its depth of colour, Nero Cretto is one of the finest examples of a black Cretto to have ever been seen at auction: indeed, only four other black versions have been offered for public sale since 1991. The deep craquelure of the current lot recalls the contours of a primeval landscape or lunar scene, an extraordinary textural opulence that imbues the work with a remarkable sense of three-dimensionality. Burri drew extensive inspiration for the Cretti series from his visits to Death Valley, the legendarily arid area of California to which he returned on a yearly basis from the late 1960s onwards. Burri expertly re-creates the waterless, cracked ground, even employing earth, mixed with acrylic and glue, to achieve a sense of verisimilitude.  Burri exerted extraordinary control over the eventual pattern of the cracks, as Cesare Brandi notes: “Burri’s focussing is impeccable and never left to chance. All the disparate elements fall into place as if in one shot taken at an infallible setting, and reunite in a pre-established, contemplated image” (Exhibition Catalogue, Palm Springs, Palm Springs Desert Museum, Alberto Burri, 1982, n.p.).
The importance Burri attached to the Cretti series within his oeuvre was indicated by his decision to create a large-scale concrete version as a moving monument to the destroyed Sicilian city of Gibellina, an immensely complex project initiated in 1979. Although this extraordinary development was beset with difficulties from the time of its instigation, from a shortage of funds to the sheer logistical challenge of covering over the ruins of an entire town with concrete blocks, the result is a highly impressive consolidation and magnification of the creative language that Burri employed when creating his Cretti series, as well as a stirring memorial to the destroyed city.
Originally trained as a doctor, Burri did not turn his thoughts towards art until time spent as a prisoner of war in Texas during the Second World War, when he began to paint in an attempt to exorcise his memories of the conflict and its impact on his homeland. James Johnson Sweeny argues that Burri extrapolated his early medical experiences into the creation of his works: "Burri is a poet, a surgeon who knows and feels with intense visualization what lies in the fleshy surface of his compositions, and an artist who is able to suggest this to the sympathetic observer" (James Johnson Sweeney, Burri, Rome 1955, p. 6). Although Burri commenced his career with an exhibition of traditional paintings in Rome in 1947, he rapidly moved on to experiment with unconventional materials, utilising burlap, tar and plastic within succeeding series of works. The introduction of earth within the Cretti emphasised Burri’s source of inspiration in the cracked Californian desert ground, as well as the extraordinary physicality of the series. Ultimately Nero Cretto is a magnificently accomplished painting which brilliantly encapsulates Burri’s primary concerns and ideals during this period of his career.