(Citta di Castello, Perugia 1915–1995 Nice) Catrame, 1949, asphalt, oil, pumice on canvas, 46.5 x 53 cm, framed, (PP)

Provenance:
Galleria Gian Ferrari, Milan (label on reverse)
Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan
Private Collection, Italy

Exhibition:
Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera, Alberto Burri, 28 May - 8 July 1984, exhibition catalogue no. 7;
Un mondo visivo nuovo, Origine, Balla, Kandinsky e le astrazioni degli anni ‘50, Lucca Center of Contemporary Art, Lucca, 10 May - 23 August 2009, exhibition catalogue page 40 with ill. (Text: Francesca Romana Morelli and Maurizio Vanni)

Literature:
Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini, Burri: Contributi al Catalogo Sistematico, Città di Castello 1990, page 24, no. 57 with ill.;
A. C. Quintavalle, Quello strappo non è una ferita, in “Panorama”, Milan 13 June 1984, page 23;
E. Villa, Alberto Burri, in “Aujourd’hui”, Paris, September 1960, page 6 with ill.;
Materiali d’oggi per pittori e scultori d’oggi, in “Arti Visive”, Rome 1958, page, 16–17 with ill.

Discovering painting by accident, Alberto Burri undertook a surprising experimentation during the post-war era: he progressed from his initial figurative paintings to his first abstract works (1948), bringing unusual extrapictorial materials to join the oils on his canvases.
His Catrami are among his first experiments: lucid and opaque blacks that, played together with the variety of the chromatic palette, gradually become thicker and more magmatic to create elegant, formal compositions. The importance of this experimentation with material—typical of Burri´s later work—coalesces in this piece with a dramatic exasperation. The superposition of blacks onto earthy tones and ochre shades is here integrated by the insistent use of red in the center of the piece, almost foreshadowing the subsequent combustions evoked in Rossi Plastica.

In Burri´s art, everything happens on the surface, which plays, stratifies and takes form in the mixture of substances favored by the artist: primarily pumice stone, sand, oil, wood, iron, sacking canvas— all humble materials that become resplendent, particularly in contrast with the bellicose reds ... replicated rhythms abound, always different: a paint-based skin that rejects any peace; that bleeds, explodes and catches fire; that cracks in controlled destruction to create unexpected balance and a carnal, painful feeling that here and there subsides into an almost mystical contemplation of nothingness.
Daniela Bellotti, ART JOURNAL September-October 2007