Alberto Burri

Although I have studied Alberto Burri's work before, I wanted to revisit him as I am getting closer to my final piece. I feel that his works gives me inspiration, whereas the other artist had not helped me as much. I don't mean to be rude by saying that they haven't helped me as much, they helped me greatly at the stage I was at during a certain piece of my coursework. However I feel that as I am coming closer to the deadline for my coursework, I needed to find an artist that corresponded with the photographs that I had recently been taking. After searching for a artist that would work well with my ideas, I came across Alberto Burri again. The last time I looked at his work, I mainly looked at the obvious layers he was creating, but now I was looking layers that were breaking, peeling away to reveal the new layers unseen layers underneath. I feel that Alberto Burri's work shows layers throughout it constantly, he uses paint and interesting materials to build up his work layer by layer. For example within his work, "Plasticia" Burri uses layers of plastic to stack upon each other, he then burns the top layer of the plastic which creates an effect of it deteriorating, and revealing a the new layer underneath. As well as looking at revealing new layers I wanted to return to looking at using different materials to create different textures, Burri inspired me to use cling film within my sketchbook to create layers in a different way and, now I feel that Burri can help me to
re-incorporate the use of different materials into my sketchbook. Since I am re-studying Burri within my work, I feel that I should look into his life in more depth than I did before. Really look at the reasons why he used the materials and colours he did and how his life experience affected the work he produced. Burri,  first began his career not as an artist but as a medical doctor, he earned a medical degree, which specialized in military medicine. He worked in Africa before being taken a prisoner to an army camp in Hereford, Texas. This were Burri first began to paint. As well as painting, Burri began to make his art out of the strange materials that surrounded him. I believe this is first where Burri starts to show he strange use of materials. Burri found discarded burlap potatoes stacks within a kitchen. You can clearly see throughout Burri's work that he never stopped using this material, when I look at this material featured in his work, I feel that it is used to create layers. Burri uses the material to create depth within his work. In addition to that this material is obviously significant to Burri. Why would he carry on using it once he was released from the prison army camp? Once released Burri continued to make compositions out of this material. This was the first type of material that gave Burri an interest into art, he could have left is behind when he was released and carried on with his medical career but Burri held on to it, featuring it in many pieces of his art work. Similar to Burri's work, Sandra Blow uses the material hessian. After studying Blow's work, I found that her and Burri saw each other, in simpler terms dated, I could see the influence that he had upon her in many pieces of her work down to the colours and materials that she used. Once the war had finished, Burri was given the chance to work with other materials. There was no longer a need for the industrial materials therefore materials such a plastic sheets, metal and common building supplies were open to his use. You can see that he took this opportunity, using it in many piece of his work. I really adore the way Burri use common known materials within his work, he doesn't just shove the material onto the canvas, he subtly places them so they create a real affect on you when you look at them. I didn't know until I looked at Burri in more depth that he used industrial materials to create his pieces. Burri gives them a whole new meaning, you don't think of them as something that he found to involve in his work but you think of them as something he made to added to make a certain depth to his work. After looking at the materials Burri used to created his work, I thought I should look at the colour he use within his work. The most colourful piece of Burri's work would have to be "Rosso Plastica". I find that this is Burri's most unexpected piece of work, in my opinion. He uses a solid block of colour, not blended with any colours. The colours he uses is similar to the colour Scarlet Lake Extra. This colour is an intense red, normally when using it in a piece I would blend it together with another colour to make it look less intense. However I'm not Burri. Burri uses this colour in all it's glory, upon the stacked pieces of plastic that he has melted. Without using any of the research that I had done on this piece, I knew this piece would relate to Burris time within the army. You can't not look at this piece and see bullet hole wounds. The bright, intense use of colours in this piece are astonishing. You stop to study it. After trying to re-searching Burri's "Rosso Plastica", I found that Burri produced most of his work as a metaphor. His background of being a medical surgeon gave him the skills to sew up his work, which is said to have represented the sewing up of bleeding flesh or the tearing of it. Therefore "Rosso Plastica", will have been a metaphor for Burri's experiences throughout the war. To conclude, I feel that studying Burri's lifestyle and work has helped me with progressing onwards, eventually heading towards my final piece.