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A seminal artistic figure
of the 20th Century, Alberto
Burri (1915–1995) was a
forebear to many artists and artistic movements—from Pop Art to Arte
Povera—both in Italy and the
United States. Combustione: Alberto Burri and
America opens on September
11 and continues through December 18, 2010. Burri’s fame is great in his native
Italy, and although his
first success as an artist was in America, he remains relatively
unknown here despite the fact that for 25 years he would winter at his home in
the Hollywood Hills. His biography links him closely with the United States
and makes him an ideal figure worth re-examination. While a doctor in the
Italian army of the 1940s, he was taken captive in Tunisia
by U.S. troops and detained
at a prisoner-of-war facility in Texas.
After the war, and with no formal instruction, Burri embarked on a career as an
artist. This tightly focused
exhibition features 35 works from 1951 to 1990, and documents the range and
achievement of Burri’s work. It will substantiate his essential place in the
history of art while raising public awareness of the role the United States—Los Angeles in particular—played in the
development of his oeuvre.
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