Alberto Burri (Italy/France, 1915-1995) paper, acrylic, fabric, and combustion on canvas mixed media abstract Art Informel collage, 1960. Signed and dated "Burri / 60" en verso and titled "Combustione.T.2." and additionally dated "60" to stretcher. Also inscribed "ZZ" within a circle en verso and "HAUT" with arrow drawing plus "1151" to stretcher. With Douane Paris Chappelle and Dogana Internazionale Italiana Chiasso E.T. stamps en verso and to stretcher. Housed in a thin wood frame. Canvas: 22 3/8" H x 17 9/16" W. Frame: 23 1/8" H x 18 5/16" W. Note: Photocopies of relevant pages from a 1980 institutional publication with provenance history are included in the image sequence. 

PRE-APPROVAL IS REQUIRED TO BID ON THIS LOT. PLEASE CONTACT CASE AUCTIONS, INC. FOR DETAILS. (865) 558-3033 or BID@CASEAUCTIONS.COM .

Literature: Illustrated in Cesare Brandi, BURRI (Rome, 1963), cat. no. 59. Reproduced sideways, and erroneously dated 1959. 

Biographical note: Alberto Burri was born in a small town in the Umbria region of Italy. In 1940 he received a degree in medicine from the Universita degli Studi di Perugia. He served in World War II first as a frontline soldier and then as a physician. Following his unit’s 1943 capture Burri was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Hereford, Texas. Disaffected by war and by his internment, he took up painting and never practiced medicine again. Burri developed a new material realism that stood apart from postwar gestural abstraction and its emotive and existentialist content. He blurred the boundaries between painting and relief sculpture. In the mid-1950s he turned to mass-produced industrial materials in prefabricated colors and developed a new technique of painting with combustion to make torched wood veneer works, welded reliefs of cold-rolled steel, and compositions of melted and charred plastic. Burri has been the subject of numerous retrospectives in Europe and the United States. (Adapted from The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation).

PROVENANCE: Deaccessioned by a Southern Institution to benefit the acquisitions fund; Acquired from Galerie de France, Paris, 1961.

Overall very good condition. Could benefit from cleaning by a professional conservator.