Ten Favorites: Alberto Burri, Mold (Muffa), 1951

I grew up twelve miles from a ruined 59,000 acre World War II camp called Camp Howze. Located outside of Gainesville, Texas, Camp Howze is now little more than a few old water towers and hundreds of cinder block nubs which mark where old barracks and buildings stood. There were many such camps all over the United States, and a large one was in Herford, Texas. In Herford, many Italian prisoners of war were kept, and several of the Italian prisoners of war, artists back in Italy, were taken out of the camp to mural local churches in Herford. One of those prisoners was Alberto Burri, a vanguard Italian painter who was often featured in the New York's famous Stable gallery in the 1950s, who Robert Rauschenberg sought out on his trip to Italy in the early 50s, and whose works, though never advertised, are some of the strongest ever made.

I knew about Herford both before and after I discovered Alberto Burri, but what I didn’t know was Herford’s impact on Burri. Apparently it was Burri’s experience as medic in the war as well as his time in the prison camp inspired his life of painting, a career that was open to impressive, deft experimentation using many unconventional materials like acetylene torches, plastic, burlap, wire, dirt, and acrylic caulk. Often paintings by Burri feature elegant divisions of space in black, brown, cream, and gold, but the paintings that really jolt, the paintings that in my opinion really matter are his gnarled, chewed works in red and black, melted plastic drippings, splattered swatches of burlap, and bursts of dirt and pumice. The work in the Art Institute of Chicago is still my favorite, a shock of grisle and splat once owned by the Chicago story teller Studs Terkle.

Only 28 by 31 inches, it makes sense that this work would have appealed to Studs, with his interest in human emotions, tall tales, and the tough challenges that people face. Burri’s work is as far from sugary as one can get, not functioning according to any recognizable program of painting yet exuding a visceral impact. This is remarkably not a Dubuffet, this is not a romanticizing of the primitive or attempt to get to raw experience. This is a legitimately troubled work, a cannon shot of sludge and mud, a puddle with drops of blood.