Alberto Burri

Italian, 1915-1995. Alberto Burri was a prominent abstract artist in the 20th century and associated with Arte Povera. Burri studied art prior to medicine at university. He was serving as a medic in the Italian army during World War II but was captured by Allied forces and sent to a PoW camp in Texas. It was there that Burri began creating art with materials around him such as burlap, cardboard, bark, and crushed stone. After he returned to Italy, he experimented with tar and resins on canvas and later melted plastic and wood, creating highly textured abstract canvases. Late in his career, he explored Minimalism with monochromatic fields and embarked on one of the largest landscape art installations, titled Grande Cretto, in a Sicilian town destroyed by an earthquake.