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Alberto Burri, Untitled

Written by Elisabetta Girardi

A prominent figure of Art Informel, Alberto Burri made matter, gesture, and meaning the foundation of his significant artistic production.

Today, we dedicate this article to the work Untitled, featured in the auction on March 23, Auction 9 – Salmoiraghi Collection, lot 58. Signed, dated, and inscribed “Per la signora Bellini” (“For Mrs. Bellini”) on the reverse, this is a panel measuring 4 x 5.7 cm, executed in 1958. In this small yet powerful composition, acrylic, canvas, and vinavil are combined to express the freedom of the unexpected. The panel and canvas are covered in dense red and black tones, symbolizing blood and death respectively.

Nomisma Aste, Asta 9 - Collezione Salmoiraghi, Lotto 58, Alberto Burri, Senza Titolo

Auction 9 – Salmoiraghi Collection, Lot 58, Alberto Burri, Untitled

Alberto Burri, the author

A World War II veteran, Alberto Burri was captured by the British in Tunisia in 1943 and later sent to a POW camp in Hereford, Texas. It was during this imprisonment that he began painting. In 1946, with the war over and a world in need of reconstruction, he moved to Rome and dedicated himself entirely to painting. After a brief trip to Paris in 1948, he approached abstract painting, experimenting with non-traditional materials such as pumice, tar, and others, emphasizing the importance of matter.

In this way, Burri forcefully became part of the Art Informel movement. Born out of the crisis of values caused by World War II, this movement led artists to seek new ways to express themselves and to give voice to the anxieties and uncertainties provoked by the war. Working with unexplored materials guided artists toward a form of gesture driven by instinct and a rejection of form—that is, anything with defined contours and physical characteristics—thus denying the rational comprehension of reality. The artistic experience of Art Informel became intertwined with the testimony of being and action, shaped by the existentialist philosophies of the time, which offered a pessimistic view of humanity and its place in a world devastated by war.

Art Informel can be broken down into three main currents of research, closely tied to Spatialism and gestural painting:

  • Gestural Informel, also known as action painting, with Jackson Pollock as its leading figure. This branch has roots in the historical avant-gardes: Dadaism with its rejection of culture, Expressionism with its violent imagery, and Surrealism, where the informal finds an important element in the valorization of the unconscious.
  • Sign-based Informel, represented by French artists like Wols and Georges Mathieu—precursors of lyrical abstraction—and the Italian Giuseppe Capogrossi.
  • Material Informel, where the true protagonists of the artwork become unconventional objects such as wood, plastics, jute, and metals. The first leading figure in this current was the French artist Jean Fautrier, who drew upon the synthetic Cubism of Picasso and Braque and the surrealist experiments of Max Ernst. His poetic vision was later embraced by Jean Dubuffet and the Spanish artist Antoni Tàpies. Alberto Burri fits squarely within this movement.

Burri’s artistic process consisted in identifying discarded materials or elements of interest—such as old sacks, wood, charred paper, metal sheets, and plastic—which all shared a past that had shaped their form. His early artistic creations—Muffe (Molds), Catrami (Tars), and Gobbi (Hunchbacks)—emerged between the late 1940s and early 1950s and still retained a pictorial character, as they were constructed following the logic of painting. Around the mid-1950s, he developed his most famous series, the Sacchi (Sacks), in which he glued jute sacks onto a surface, intervening through various gestures to explore the relationship between matter and support, creating powerful contrasts. The surfaces appear taut or wrinkled; old tears in the sacks open up or new ones emerge, revealing the richly colored background underneath.

In 1957, he introduced the Combustioni (Combustions) series, where fire became a fundamental element in the creation of the artwork. Materials such as wood, metal, and plastic were directly burned, violently altering the surface in a way that deeply affected the inner layers—almost viscerally. By the 1970s, Burri developed the Cretti series, where the consumption of matter reached its peak. Here, purity and expressiveness are at their highest.

Burri’s works contain no symbolism. Rather, the gesture and material take on predominant importance. The materials become sensitive through the signs they bear—signs that carry traces of suffering, inflicted wounds, and scars, renewing the pain through the artistic act. Despite the creation of rips and ruptures in the material, Burri seeks to expose the entire surface to light, to bring everything to clarity—on the level of human consciousness. Although the material is tormented by the signs, consciousness is not lost; on the contrary, as the anguish increases, clarity becomes more intense.

In the Sacchi, Muffe, Petroli (Petrol works), and Plastiche (Plastics) series, Burri shapes, tears, treats, and heals the material as though it were the body of a human society self-harmed by war—offering an intense and radical artistic experience in which the material itself becomes the expressive core of collective memory.

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