Alberto Burri

Acquired directly from the artist by the previous owner in the late 1960s

Thence by descent to the present owner

Vittorio Rubiu, Alberto Burri, Turin 1975, n.p., no. 74, illustrated

Fondazione di Palazzo Albizzini, Burri: Contributi al Catalogo Sistematico, Città di Castello 1990, pp. 196-97, no. 837, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly warmer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good and original condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light. .
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Executed in 1967, Bianco Plastica embodies a mature example of Alberto Burri’s most celebrated and important series, the Plastiche. Having previously gained recognition for his works of coarsely stitched burlap (Sacchi), scorched wooden compositions (Legno), and torched iron pieces (Ferri), the arrival of this corpus comprising visually stunning and densely layered molten plastic compositions marked the very apotheosis of Burri’s subversive transfiguration of the two-dimensional work of art. In its layered igneous topography, the present work invites a dialogue with visions of the apocalyptic in art, ranging from the biblical spectres of John Martin through to the eviscerated auto-destructivity of Gustav Metzger and the nihilistic distillation of the Zero movement via Otto Piene or the Feu paintings of Yves Klein. By wielding the transformative and alchemical nature of fire as his principle tool, Burri paints with flames to exploit the potential of destructive creativity.

The reductive and nihilistic tendencies at the core of Burri’s Plastiche invoke a correlative mode of transfiguration to the work of his near contemporaries. Yves Klein’s pursuit of a mystical and otherworldly Infinite found its ultimate expression in the alchemical potential of fire: the theatrical command of an enormous fire hose brought forth a series of works in which fire's symbolic prima materia status and annihilative/sublimative force provided Klein with a definitive symbolic and spiritual expression of the Void. Similarly Lucio Fontana’s violent puncturing and slashing through the surface of a pristine monochrome canvas furnished his unique Spatialist theorems of a further infinite dimension. Thus, echoing Fontana and presaging Klein, Burri’s burning of materials within the context of the traditional work of art opened apertures onto a blackened void beyond the picture plane. Yet, contrary to harbouring a spiritual dimension or posing a metaphysical breach, his use of fire served rather to heighten our knowledge of materials and explore the expressive potential inherent within the moment of a work’s creation.

As James Johnson Sweeney has remarked in his influential analysis: "Burri transforms rags into a metaphor for bleeding human flesh, breathes fresh life into the inanimate materials which he employs, making them live and bleed; then heals the wounds with the same evocative ability and the same sensibility with which he first inflicted them. What for Cubists would have been reduced to the partial distillation of a painted composition... in Burri's hands becomes a living organism: flesh and blood... The picture is human flesh, the artist a surgeon" (James Johnson Sweeney quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, Rome, L'Obelisco, Burri, 1955, n.p.).  In the present work, the sensitive interplay of molten shapes and blackened voids against a surface of white cellotex implore the viewer's eye to scan the craters of an eviscerated landscape, taking in the violence and pathos redolent in the dissipated layers of transparent plastic as subjects of the elemental destructivity of fire. Brilliantly giving expression to the horrors of recent history whilst renouncing any symbolic or metaphorical meaning, Bianco Plastica possesses a firey poesis that is utterly Burri’s own.