(Citta di Castello/Perugia 1915–1995 Nice)
Combustione, 1970, signed and dated, dedicated on the reverse, plastic, vinavil and combustion on cardboard, 23.7 x 16 cm, 27 x 20.5 cm (overall dimension with plastique borders), framed

Provenance:
Private Collection, Città di Castello
European Private Collection

Literature:
VV. AA, Burri. Contributi al Catalogo Sistematico, Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini, Città di Castello, 1990, no. 1931 with ill. Burri. Catalogo generale. Pittura 1958–1978, Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini - Collezione Burri, Città di Castello, 2015, vol. II, pp. 234–235, no. 1236 with ill. vol. IV, p.187, no. i. 7027 with ill., with wrong dimension

Over the fifty years of Burri's artistic activity, the constant that appears to characterise his development across the breadth of his work is the pursuit of an ever unpredictable balance in the image of his paintings.
In the birth of each of Burri's works "by gradual definition" (Brandi), the geometric construction and compositional angles are almost always very evident.
His geometry does not adhere to scientific criteria, but rather a sort of distributive configuration of forms and colours that is largely intuitive and empirical, but no less precise for that. [...]
It has been argued on several occasions that Burri’s originality lies in the treatment of matter as language. However, it must be said that this language would remain devoid of any distinctive attribution if we did not come to recognise that - unlike all other Informel painting - it is defined by its denial of representation in favour of the pure "presentation" of matter: matter which Burri intends as the genesis of a language open to the recognition of the "true" defined as the "real" that asks to be epiphanically “seen” and understood as an ontological entity. [...]
Devoid of hidden intentions, his painting therefore responded with flagrant simplicity to needs that Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco has rightly identified in his critical commentary: "Until now the mental structure came first and then the material, from now on the material will come first and then the manual structuring: from forming the form to forming the material".
Bruno Corà, Burri i primi cento anni di grandezza, in "Burri. Catalogo generale. Pittura 1945-1957" pp. 32-37