Alberto Burri

Alberto Burri (12 March 1915 – 13 February 1995) was an Italian visual artist, painter, sculptor and physician based in Città di Castello. He is associated with the matterism of the European informal art movement and described his style as a polymaterialist. He had connections with Lucio Fontana's spatialism and, with Antoni Tàpies, an influence on the revival of the art of post-war assembly in America (Robert Rauschenberg) as in Europe.

Burri's artistic research became personal in short time, between 1948 and 1950 he began experimenting with using unusual, 'unorthodox' materials such as tar, sand, zinc, pumice, and Aluminium dust as well as Polyvinyl chloride glue, this last material being elevated to the same importance as oil colors. During this artistic transition, the painter showed his sensitivity to the mixed-media type of abstraction of Enrico Prampolini, a central figure in Italian Abstract art. Nonetheless Burri went one step further in his Catrami (Tars), presenting tar not as a simple collage material, but as an actual color blended itself with the totality of the painting.

Learn more on Wikipedia