FOR 11/30

ALBERTO BURRI MITCHELL-INNES & NASH, CHELSEA

ak/gs set 11/20 #720237

NEW YORK CITY — Mitchell-Innes & Nash is presenting the first New York exhibition in more than 20 years of works by the late Italian artist Alberto Burri. Featuring some 20 multimedia paintings and select works on paper, the exhibition celebrates Mitchell-Innes & Mash representation of the estate of Minsa Burri, the artist’s widow, and will shed fresh light on the scholarship and appreciation of this Italian postwar artist. The exhibit is on view through January 9.

Providing the first public display of holdings from the Minsa Burri estate, along with a selection of works from private collections, the exhibition surveys Burri’s entire output, covering almost five decades and highlighting his provocative experiments with unorthodox materials. Starting with an oil on canvas from 1946 and ending with works on ceramic from the early 1990s, the paintings on view showcase Burri’s command of a wide variety of materials, including burlap, sack cloth, pumice, tar, plastic, Cellotex (an industrial material), ceramic and glue, and exhibit a range of artistic techniques such as burning, cutting, collage and other manipulations of materials.

Alberto Burri (1915–1995) was born in Citta di Castello, Italy. He earned a medical degree in 1940, before serving as a surgeon during World War II in North Africa where he was captured in 1943 by Allied troops and sent to the United States, to a prisoner-of-war camp in Hereford, Texas. Burri began to paint during his internment using empty burlap bags and mail sacks for canvases, and continued to use mail sacks throughout his career. Following his release in 1945, Burri returned to Italy and had his first solo exhibition in Rome in 1947.

Burri’s work was exhibited throughout the United States and Europe in numerous group and solo exhibitions, at venues that include the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, both in New York; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Burri was awarded Third Prize at the 1958 Carnegie International (Pittsburgh), the UNESCO Prize at the 1959 Sao Paulo Biennale and granted a solo exhibition at the 30th Venice Biennale in 1960. More recently, Burri’s work was prominently featured in Germano Celant’s “Italian Metamorphosis” exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 1994, a year before Burri died in Nice, France.

Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Chelsea is at 534 West 26th Street. For information, www.miandn.com or 212-744-7400.