CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/10/2015

Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting

In 1955, James B. Byrnes, director of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, wrote of Italian artist Alberto Burri (1915-95), "Using his skill as a surgeon he opened wound-like apertures, closed others with a suture, with the result that the material itself took on the character of something physical, now a landscape, then a corpse. The finished work speaks of decay and death, with each wounded canvas itself the subject of operating room activity. Those works which are less physical in intent suggest an aerial view of a pock-marked battlefield." Sack and Gold (1953) is reproduced from the Guggenheim Museum's major new retrospective catalogue.