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Lot Essay
B 2 was executed in 1954 and presents the viewer with an elegant sliver of reality as captured and composed by Alberto Burri. This work has a dedication from the artist himself to 'Martha', presumably indicating that it was a gift to the owner of the Martha Jackson Gallery, its first owner.
B 2 has been created using a variety of materials, both painterly and otherwise, on faesite, a type of composite hardboard. In this way, extending the aesthetic development that had characterised Burri's Sacchi, which comprised types of canvas and linen, Burri has assembled a range of humble elements in such a manner that they achieve a sense of compositional equilibrium. In creating this work, Burri has employed a variety of techniques, resulting in the surface comprising pumice as well as paint. These materials are elevated to the status of art, granted an apotheosis by being taken from the world in which they would have possibly been put to more 'practical' use, and instead viewed and appreciated in their own rights. That appreciation is augmented by Burri's innate sense of composition: he has juxtaposed the various elements in such a way that they each reverberate with each other, heightening the sense of contrasts upon the surface. This has become an intimate landscape of textures and gestures, revealing Burri's incredible innovations, as he moved away from the means of traditional painting, instead using the real world around him to represent itself.
Burri's espousal of such humble materials as hardboard and various textiles was at once innovative, and also allowed a stark commentary on the tattered landscape of war-ravaged Italy during the early 1950s, when the damage caused by the Second World War was still on such vivid display. At the same time, it reflected a new wave of 'realism' that was sweeping across the European avant garde, which would include many of the artists associated with Art Informel and later even with Nouveau Réalisme. In B 2, Burri has created a capsule of distilled reality that would come to find echoes in, say, the torn posters of Mimmo Rotella. Both artists took the very fabric of the world around them, rather than selecting a glossy means of portraying the world in a subjective manner. Representation - and all its tainted ideological associations with Fascism, Socialist Realism and politics in general - has been eschewed, and even surpassed, in favour of reality itself.
B 2 has been created using a variety of materials, both painterly and otherwise, on faesite, a type of composite hardboard. In this way, extending the aesthetic development that had characterised Burri's Sacchi, which comprised types of canvas and linen, Burri has assembled a range of humble elements in such a manner that they achieve a sense of compositional equilibrium. In creating this work, Burri has employed a variety of techniques, resulting in the surface comprising pumice as well as paint. These materials are elevated to the status of art, granted an apotheosis by being taken from the world in which they would have possibly been put to more 'practical' use, and instead viewed and appreciated in their own rights. That appreciation is augmented by Burri's innate sense of composition: he has juxtaposed the various elements in such a way that they each reverberate with each other, heightening the sense of contrasts upon the surface. This has become an intimate landscape of textures and gestures, revealing Burri's incredible innovations, as he moved away from the means of traditional painting, instead using the real world around him to represent itself.
Burri's espousal of such humble materials as hardboard and various textiles was at once innovative, and also allowed a stark commentary on the tattered landscape of war-ravaged Italy during the early 1950s, when the damage caused by the Second World War was still on such vivid display. At the same time, it reflected a new wave of 'realism' that was sweeping across the European avant garde, which would include many of the artists associated with Art Informel and later even with Nouveau Réalisme. In B 2, Burri has created a capsule of distilled reality that would come to find echoes in, say, the torn posters of Mimmo Rotella. Both artists took the very fabric of the world around them, rather than selecting a glossy means of portraying the world in a subjective manner. Representation - and all its tainted ideological associations with Fascism, Socialist Realism and politics in general - has been eschewed, and even surpassed, in favour of reality itself.