Alberto Burri

The artist
Martha Jackson Gallery, New York
Marlborough Gallery, New York
DiLaurenti Gallery Ltd., New York
Private Collection, Central America
Thence by descent to the present owner

New York, Museum of Modern Art; Aurora (New York), Wells College; Gambier (Ohio), Kenyon College; Wilmington (Ohio); Portland, Art Museum, Wilmington College; Sarasota, Ringling Museum of Art; Tampa, University of South Florida; Oswego (New York), State University College; Clinton (New York), Root Art Centre Hamilton College; Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Centre; Iowa City, University of Iowa; Columbus (Ohio), Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana, 1966-68, no. 66.854

Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini, Eds., Burri. Contributi al Catalogo Sistematico, Città di Castello, 1990, p. 170, no. 715, illustrated in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Santa Monica, Museum of Art, Alberto Burri: Combustione, 2010, p. 24, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly brighter. Condition: This work is in very good condition.
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"The action of fire became much more domineering and determinant in the unforeseeable series of the plastic combustions which in the 1960s congenially marked Burri's full maturity." (Carlo Pirovano, 'The Seasons of Fire', in: Exhibition Catalogue, Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizione, Burri: 1915-1995 Retrospektive, 1997, pp.114-115). 

Navigating a volcanic topography of molten red plastic, Alberto Burri's magnificent Rosso Plastica L.A. is an outstanding exhibition of the artist's revolutionary series of combusted plastic works.  Densely layered monumental sheets of scorched molten plastic constitute an eviscerated landscape – a reduction, or even reversal, of the artificiality of plastic back to the natural crude oil of its subterranean origin.  Heralded as the first artist to introduce the reality of nature and the everyday into the work of art, Burri first forged a dialogue with the alchemical potential of fire in 1957, initiating his first Plastiche works in 1960.  Unparalleled in its remarkable poeticism, Rosso Plastica L.A.  represents the very apotheosis of the celebrated Plastiche series.  Executed in 1963, this monumental essay of exquisite surface manipulation was prestigiously exhibited with the travelling Museum of Modern Art exhibition Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana between 1966 and 1968.  Extraordinary for its dense treacle-like surface, the present work illuminates Burri's ground-breaking explorations into the power and sensuality of materials, and the natural force of fire.

Fascinated by the concept of fire as a creative medium, Burri first approached its alchemical potential in collaboration with the writer Guiseppe Cenza in 1955.  In preparation for the November issue of magazine Civiltà delle Macchine, Burri conducted an early formal experiment during which paper and fabric were scorched and burned to optimum formal resolution.  Committed to an appropriate backing sheet, the results were thereafter published alongside an article by Cenza.  Marking the very incipit of Burri's engagement with the aggressive expressivity of fire, this experiment provoked a sustained dialogue initiated in the early Legno, Combustione and Ferro series, reaching the very highest tier in Plastica – superlatively exemplified by the present Rosso Plastica L.A., an expansive work of unparalleled splendour.

As a procedure in which the contingency of fire's alchemical reaction ultimately informs the aesthetic surface of the artwork, Burri's practice traverses the boundaries between art and life whilst simultaneously bridging the threshold between the natural and synthetic.  Exposed to the destructive power of fire, the natural transformation of perishing materiality forges a new and contingent aesthetic reality.  According to Carlo Pirovano, in Burri's work the moment of "panic", occasioned by fire's terrific devastation is surpassed "by the sublime regenerative potentiality which is innate to fire, exactly in the exploitation of that mythical gift which not so much consists in the destructive charge as it does in the possibility of transforming matter... of creating."  (Ibid., p.112). 

By reducing sheets of red plastic to blistering welts of carbonated and molten substance, the fundamentally destructive methodology of Burri's practice shares much in common with the philosophical school of existential nihilism.  In nihilism, the threat of destruction fundamentally precipitates alternate states of existence and realms of knowledge.  As initially propounded by Friedrich Nietzsche, the privileging of the destructive potential of Dionysian abandon provides access behind the ordered and rationalised Apollonian veil of appearances.  A line of inquiry later expounded by post-structuralist thinkers Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard, destruction and annihilation were theoretically posited as the locus for exposing alternate metaphysical planes of thought and existence, as harbouring an underlying existential 'truth'.  Engendered within an age of post-war disillusionment, Burri's work forges a visual counterpart to such theorems: by exposing the industrial materiality of plastic to the elemental force of fire, new life and beauty are propagated through brutality, laceration, and evisceration.  Rosso Plastica L.A.  is a superlative example of this groundbreaking artistic discovery.  Crater-like voids of molten plastic skin chart a delicate compositional harmony across a monumental expanse of strident vigorous red.  Deformed and bubbling like a red-veil of liquid magma, this extraordinary work exudes an unparalleled abject-beauty; simultaneously wound-like and evocative of natural undergrowth, the fury of fire eloquently tempers a dramatic and sensitive play of moonscape shapes and voids.  

Intensely striking, the forceful contrast of vibrant red punctuated by voids of abyssal black, heightens the compositional drama.  As outlined by Carlo Pirovano, "The chromatic choice – and Burri alternated the tar-black with a red embodying strident timbre resonances – in a dramatic way accentuates the effect of laceration, if not actually that of annihilation ... at times, the red plastics also evoke the compositional modules – often elaborated upon scansions in relation to the golden section - and the eurythmical divisions of the surfaces." (Ibid., p.115). Compositionally swathing the surface like a cutaneous screen, the rhythmic dispersal of intense red against black evokes the theatrical aesthetic and dramatic light of Caravaggio.  A master who articulated his painterly forms through shadow and dramatic highlight, Caravaggio frequently employed the velveteen quality of red fabric as a formal framing device, often portraying swathing curtains behind which the drama of his canvases unfolds.  Indeed, elegantly stretched, draped and gathered Burri's surface recalls the monumental drapery of fabric associated with such imagery.  However, while very much like a curtain – simultaneously veiling and revealing – the drama of Burri's Rosso Plastica L.A. is nonetheless located purely in the vivacity of materia and the myriad dramatic allusions invoked by surface manipulation.

The concentrated strata of shimmering molten plastic paraphrases nature by means other than paint; analogous to flesh and blood whilst evocative of the change and decay in natural phenomenon, Burri's Rosso Plastica L.A. authoritatively engenders a tension between natural and synthetic, annihilation and creation. In this work, the destructive ferocity of fire is married to the aesthetic splendour it creates.  A work of true multidimensionality, the delicately detailed and captivating surface powerfully articulated in dramatic red, posits Rosso Plastica L.A. as the very highest achievement of Alberto Burri's illustrious career.