Conquering space with matter: a technical study of Alberto Burri’s materials and techniques

Abstract

Alberto Burri (1915–1995) was a pioneering Italian painter and sculptor. Born in Citta di Castello, a small town in the region of Umbria, he earned a medical degree from the University of Perugia. While serving in the Ethiopian campaign and in World War II, first as a frontline soldier and then as a physician, he was captured and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Hereford, Texas. It was there that Burri disavowed the medical profession and began to paint. He held a pivotal position in the modern post-war era, exhibiting in Rome and New York in the early 1950s. The present article describes an in-depth scientific investigation of a selection of 14 paintings by Burri, each belonging to one of his series: Sacchi (sacks), Bianchi (whites), Catrami (tars), Muffe (molds), Gobbi (hunchbacks), Legni (woods), Combustioni plastiche (plastic combustions), Ferri (irons), Cretti (monochromatic fields of induced craquelure), and Cellotex (compositions on flayed fiberboard). Elemental information obtained non-invasively via X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy was here combined with detailed characterization of the pigments, extenders, binders, and plastics by means of micro-invasive techniques, including pyrolysis–gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS), Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopies, and scanning electron microscopy/energy-dispersive X-ray (SEM/EDX) spectroscopy. Through the joint use of traditional artists’ materials along with industrial products newly introduced to the market, Burri appears to have encapsulated space into highly dramatic compositions at the boundaries between painting and relief sculpture.