In the period following the Second World War, Alberto Burri, more than any other artist in Italy, explored the pictorial urgency of confronting the material of his work. Unable to be satisfied with the embellishment of the body and soft consistency of paint, he took a step that leapt over pictorial technique, opening up new thresholds to the physical reality of the world, which, early in the century had been addressed in Cubist collages. In the years following the end of the war, Burri experimented exhaustively with different materials, modified the composition of the impastos, and created his Muffe (mold pieces). In 1950 he created his first Sacchi (burlap sack pieces), and two years later he returned to work on them, achieving a fully mature pictorial language. [...]
