Taking place at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, between the 10th of May and 28th of July, BURRI la pittura, irriducibile presenza constitutes the final chapter of a series of international exhibitions and events staged to celebrate the avant-garde Italian artist Alberto Burri (1915-1995) over the course of the past year.

Curated by Bruno Corà, the President of the Fondazione Alberto Burri, and organised with the Fondazione Burri and in collaboration with Tornabuoni Art and Paola Sapone MCIA, in partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo, the exhibition, chronologically covers the many important facets of Burri’s artistic output, and includes a number of masterpieces belonging to each phase of the artist’s career – from the incredibly rare Catrami series, starting in 1948, to the final Cellotex works from 1994. The show presents around 50 masterpieces on loan from important museums in Italy and abroad, from the Fondazione Burri and from prestigious private collections. Significantly, the Fondazione Burri, in the artist’s home town of Città di Castello, Umbria, is lending many major works from its collection for the first time, creating a fuller picture of the artist than has previously been seen. Together, these works span the entire length of Burri’s career as one of the most important figures in the Post-War art of the 20th century. The show is also somewhat of a homecoming for Burri, whose work was last shown in Venice in 1983, when the former Cantieri Navali on the island of Giudecca played host to 18 examples from Burri’s cycle of works entitled Sestante, or ‘Sextants’.

This exhibition is complemented by a multimedia archive, including never-before-seen film footage of the artist at work. A bilingual catalogue (Italian-English) with introductions by the curator Bruno Corà, President of the Fondazione Burri, and Luca Massimo Barbero, Director of the Institute of Art History at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, proves to be a useful tool in the study of Burri’s work and also includes an updated bibliography. The exhibition has been designed by the architect Tiziano Sarteanesi.