Exceptional Works: Alberto Burri

“I can only say this: painting for me is a freedom attained, constantly consolidated, vigilantly guarded so as to draw from it the power to paint more.”

—Alberto Burri

Alberto Burri

Sacco e oro, 1953

Oil, burlap, and gold leaf on burlap

34 x 39 3/4 inches (86.4 x 101 cm)
Framed: 34 3/4 x 40 1/2 inches (88.3 x 102.9 cm)

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One of the most important artists of the Italian post-war period, Alberto Burri (1915-1995) is widely recognized for his revolutionary approach to material that expanded notions of painting and positioned him as a central protagonist of postwar abstraction. The subject of major exhibitions including at Tate Modern and the Guggenheim in recent decades, Burri’s work continues to influence generations of artists.

Sacco e oro (1953) is a prime example of Burri’s most famous series of works: the ripped, sewn, and sutured Sacchi (Sacks) created between 1950 and 1956. Burri’s approach proved a profoundly significant antecedent to the arte povera movement, as well as to the explorations of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, who famously visited Burri in his studio the year the present work was made.

Sacco e oro was first acquired directly from Burri in 1954 by the filmmaker and collector Robert D. Graff, who had previously spent time living in Italy. It remained in his collection until 1993 when it was purchased by the present owner. The work was featured in Roma-New York: 1948–1964, an important exhibition organized by Germano Celant (1940–2020), at the Murray and Isabella Rayburn Foundation, New York, in 1993.

Alberto Burri, far left, with other Italian soldiers during the Italo-Ethiopian War, Amba Aradam, 1935

The burlap-based Sacchi compositions are derived from Burri's experience as an army doctor, and later a prisoner of war in Hereford, Texas, during World War II. Ubiquitous and all-purpose, burlap sacks served diverse functions, from the transportation of supplies to building barricades. Burri's mature Sacchi were often made with recycled textiles that the miller in his hometown of Città di Castello saved for him. Burri would mount his Sacchi onto traditional wooden stretchers, transforming them into a new kind of non-representational painting.

A cart loaded with sacks of cereal provided by the United Nations Relief And Rehabilitation Administration, Rome, c. 1945-1947. Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images (left); Alberto Burri collecting sacks to use for his work, n.d. (right)

“Burri uses a sack as a degraded, devalued material, a nothing that becomes an everything.... He removes it from its poor, ephemeral condition and makes it express a culture, Italian culture, entrusting it to a low, material experience, a cosmogony of discarded repertoires and entities, which are recomposed to form an astonishing image. Ultimately, Burri still believes in the protagonism and psychism of things, he sees material as ... a mirror of human existence.”

—Germano Celant

Alberto Burri, Composizione (Composition), 1953. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. © Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, Città di Castello/2018 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome

Alberto Burri, Bianco 1955, 1955. Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

The ready-made qualities of the Sacchi, such as the structural seams and rips found in the raw burlap, play an integral role in the composition of each piece. These works would go on to influence Rauschenberg's use of assemblage techniques, after he, along with fellow American artist Cy Twombly, visited Burri’s studio during a trip to Italy in 1953.

These artists’ work is included in the current exhibition Roma/New York, 1953–1964 at David Zwirner, a show inspired by a 1993 exhibition at the Murray and Isabella Rayburn Foundation in New York, the catalogue for which features the present painting by Burri.

Installation view, Roma/New York, 1953–1964, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

A detail from Sacco e oro on the covers of the publications accompanying Roma-New York: 1948–1964, The Murray and Isabella del Frate Rayburn Foundation, New York, November 5, 1993–January 10, 1994, curated by Germano Celant

Roma/New York, 1953–1964 at David Zwirner

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“Robert Rauschenberg was deeply affected by his experience of visiting [Burri] the Italian painter’s studio in Rome, confirming the young painter’s development of newspaper collage and his sludgy first monochromes. The Greek-born Italian Arte Povera artist Jannis Kounellis was also indebted to Burri, arranging burlap bags in various works and employing fire in his working process.”

—Anthony White, Artforum , 2016

Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (Gold Painting), c. 1953

A prime example of Burri’s Sacchi, Sacco e oro comprises two burlap panels that are stitched together and completely covered on one side with a thick layer of black paint and on the other, with gold leaf. Throughout his career, Burri returned to the color black, wielding it as a potent and evocative compositional tool.

Privileging the alchemical qualities of both natural and industrial materials, Burri frequently enlisted techniques such as sewing, burning, or melting to alter their properties or appearance, challenging the material's physical and aesthetic limits. Utilizing a restricted palette, Burri either retained the natural hue of his materials or used red, black, or white paint.

“[Burri] zeros in on the burlap bags, patching together their often already-patched surfaces with bits of other faded fabrics and areas of stark black or white acrylic, evoking abject landscapes or mended walls or tents.... These works have an immensely resonant complexity.”

—Roberta Smith, The New York Times, 2016

Alberto Burri, Sacco e oro, 1953 (detail)

“In Burri's painting there is no other colour that has the same constant presence as black. Malevich's legacy enters Burri's sensitivity like a genetic trace; it is the last window opened onto the desert of the world as night falls. Burri descends into the darkness with all the determination of the poet destined to extol the abyss of an epoch.”

—Bruno Corà, art historian

Fra Angelico, The Crucifixion, 1420–1423. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A special element in Sacco e oro is the artist’s inclusion of small areas of gold against muted tones of black and brown. The combination of shining gold leaf and the humble texture of burlap sackcloth in this painting might be compared with art historical works of which Burri was surely aware, for example the late medieval and early Italian renaissance depictions of Christ clad in a simple loincloth and framed against lavish gold grounds.

Following his first gallery solo exhibition in Rome in 1947, Burri presented his first two solo shows in America in 1953, at the Allan Frumkin Gallery in Chicago and Stable Gallery in New York—then an important nexus between artists working in Rome and New York. The Guggenheim acquired its first Burri in 1953, and his work featured prominently in the inaugural exhibition at the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building in 1959.

The present painting has been included in important exhibitions at the Guggenheim and Tate Modern in recent decades.

Alberto Burri (second from left) on a bragozzo going to the Island of Torcello near Venice during the 30th Venice Biennale, 1960; also pictured: Nino Franchina (left of Burri), Basilio Franchina (right of Burri wearing glasses), Afro (behind Franchina), Burri’s wife, Minsa Craig (right of Afro), and Gian Tommaso Liverani, owner of Galleria La Salita, Rome (with his shirt unbuttoned). Photo by Virginia Dortch. © The Estate of Virginia Dortch Dorazio / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Letter from Eleanor Ward to Alberto Burri, November 10, 1956. Courtesy Archives of American Art, Washington, DC

Installation view, Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2015

“In a theoretical, politicised climate for art, Burri’s half-century obsession with matter is glorious. Any material he chooses ... becomes sensuously engaging, and persuasive as an irreducible essence of painting.... [By] celebrating the raw physical presence of things, and their capacity for transformation by needle, blowtorch, scalpel, Burri conveyed postwar Europe’s abjection and disillusion. His art is ecstatic and nihilistic at the same time.”

—Jackie Wullschläger, The Financial Times, 2019

Fondazioni Burri, Citta di Castello Perugia, Italy. The Palazzo Albizzini “Collezione Burri” Foundation was created by the artist in 1978 with an initial donation of thirty-two works.

“He processed matter to create a new form and, above all, a new temperature and object in space.”

—Bruno Corà, 2019

Consign with David Zwirner