Footnotes

This work is registered in the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini, Città di Castello, under no. 4938.

Provenance
Edgardo Mannucci Collection, Rome
Galleria Il Segno, Rome
Private Collection, Italy
Galleria Valente Arte, Finale Ligure
Private Collection, Italy
Private Collection, Italy (acquired from the above)
Sale: Bonhams, London, Post-War & Contemporary Art, 1 July 2015, Lot 6
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Exhibited
L'Aquila, Castello Cinquecentesco, Alternative attuali, Omaggio a Burri, Retrospettiva antologica 1948-1961, 1962, no. 2
Parma, Galleria d'Arte Niccoli, Alberto Burri 1946-1966, 1993-1994, p. 33, illustrated in colour
Prato, Museo Pecci, Burri e Fontana: 1949-1968, 1996, p. 97, no. 2, illustrated in colour
Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni; Munich, Lenbachhaus; Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Burri: Opere 1944-1995, 1996-1997, p. 146, illustrated in colour
Fukuyama, Museum of Art; Osaka, The National Museum of Art, Afro, Burri, Fontana, 2002, p. 77, no. 23, illustrated in colour
Cherasco, Palazzo Salmatoris, I Grandi Maestri della pittura internazionale, da Picasso a Fontana, 2003, p. 89, illustrated in colour

Literature
Cesare Brandi and Vittorio Rubiu, Burri, Rome 1963, p. 186, no. 29, illustrated in black and white
Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Ed., Burri, contributi al catalogo sistematico, Città di Castello 1990, p. 22, no. 47, illustrated in colour
Richard W. Gassen Ed., Kunst im Aufbruch: Abstraktion zwischen 1945 und 1959, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998, p. 166, illustrated in colour (incorrect artist name)
Miriam Mirolla, Guido Zucconi and Rita Scrimieri Eds., Arte del 1945-2001, Milan 2007, p. 29, no. 8, illustrated in colour
Massimo De Sabbata, Burri e l'informale, Florence 2008, p. 263, illustrated in colour
Bruno Corà Ed., Alberto Burri: Catalogo generale. Pittura 1945-1957. Tomo I, Città di Castello 2015, p. 65, no. 65, illustrated in colour
Rita Olivieri and Chiara Sarteanesi Eds., Alberto Burri: Catalogo generale. Repertorio cronologico 1945-1994. Tomo VI, Città di Castello 2015, p. 36, no. i4938, illustrated in colour



Alberto Burri's influence has long been recognised and following a critically acclaimed exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York in 2015, his reputation as one of the most significant artists of the Twentieth Century has been firmly cemented.

Catrame I from 1949 is a seminal work from the most innovative period of Burri's life. As the title, meaning 'Tar I', alludes he combines the traditional technique of oil paint on canvas with thick tar. He adroitly handles the viscosity of the tar to develop the fascinating forms seen here, further etching sharp lines into it once it had dried and solidified, adding sculptural texture to the slick, glossy surface. Scanning its complex landscape of soft, sinuous contours, its ridges and crevices, a sense of form and space, key tenants of the artist's practice that he explored throughout his life, begin to emerge. It draws us in like a shadow, strange and ambiguous from afar, but on closer inspection a mass of movement and incongruity. Its apparent darkness begins to lift as the light plays across its varied surface, and our eyes are drawn to the vibrant patches of colour which emerge amongst the black, a warm, glowing core at the heart of the composition. Though sometimes ill-defined as being 'poor' materials, there is nothing meagre or modest about Catrame I: in fact, it demonstrates Burri's talent for artistic alchemy, transforming the apparently mundane into something almost magical.

A doctor by training, Burri was a medic in World War II which would see him captured by Allied forces and held in a prisoner-of-war camp in Hereford, Texas. In the camp he turned to painting, using the rudimentary materials available to him, such as burlap, which greatly influenced his radical and experimental choice of materials throughout his career. He returned to Italy upon his release in 1946 and, turning away from the political realism that defined much of the art of that period, dove head first into abstraction.

In the winter of 1948-1949 Burri spent a significant amount of time in Paris, visiting the Louvre, meeting Joan Miró, seeing Jean Dubuffet's tar works from the same period and experiencing the exciting atmosphere of the Galerie Denise René. In 1950 he helped to found the group Gruppo Origine, who hoped to combat the increasingly decorative nature of current abstraction. Two years later an exhibition organised by Michel Tapié would initiate the formation of Art Informel which challenged all that had come before it by using unprecedented materials and taking risks with existing artistic conventions. Artists from across the world began to take notice: in 1953 Robert Rauschenberg visited Burri twice, taking home a number of new ideas that would undoubtedly influence Rauschenberg's Black Paintings, which began to appear around the same time.

Catrame I is not about reproduction or recreation of reality, it is rather an example of the production and creation of something entirely new. Its immense exhibition history, being shown internationally in Rome, Brussels and Osaka amongst other locations, demonstrates the significance of the work in Burri's oeuvre. As an early example of Burri's formative abstracts, this work represents a crucial turning point in Twentieth Century abstract art.