MAON, 19th and 20th century art museum in Rende (CS)
November 11, 2015, 6:00 p.m.
Inauguration of the Exhibition
Alberto Burri and the Poets
MATERIA e SUONO della PAROLA
curated by Bruno Corà and Tonino Sicoli
In the year in which the Centenary of Alberto Burri's birth is celebrated all over the world, a tribute of the original to the great Umbrian Master is the one that is returned to him at the MAON - Museum of 19th and 20th Century Art in Rende, Calabria. It is the exhibition “Alberto Burri and the Poets” curated by the director of the same Museum, Tonino Sicoli and by the President of the Burri Foundation, Bruno Corà.
The exhibition, which benefits from the decisive collaboration of the Burri Foundation, will remain open at the MAON from 11 November to 27 February 2016.
“For those who know even a little about Burri’s biography, this is an eagerly awaited exhibition. Burri was a poet who expressed his poetry in works of art, rough, intense, personal and completely universal. That came from the depths and dug deep into the interlocutor,” says Corà.
“Also because of this sensitivity, he established intense, prolonged relationships with some of the great poets of his time. By engaging, even lively, with them, illustrating their works, incorporating their feelings into his own works.” And the exhibition “Burri and the Poets: matter and sound of the word” gives an account of these relationships. Here, alongside an emblematic and great work by the master, numerous other creations are exhibited that testify to his assiduous and particular relationship with poetry and poets. These are original works created for book covers in now rare and valuable editions, works created by Burri for special editions, extraordinary testimonies of intense collaborations. The relationship between Burri and Giuseppe Ungaretti is well known.
For the great poet, Burri was, together with Fautrier, the most beloved painter. In a letter of 1963, he sketched this portrait: «Burri, the doctor, then painter, returning from imprisonment in the concentration camps, who, with that horror in his eyes, empties, in his works, the infernal bubo, shows in the midst of mourning, the unjust crater of blood and fire wanted by hell, and shows how the flame of freedom ultimately dominates even the most atrocious sadism». A few months later Ungaretti visited the Venice Biennale and was struck by the «stupendous room of Burri, the last painter left in the world… Fontana has a unique purity. The rest is either old or stupid. Painting is dead. Poetry is dead. Happy times!».
For the poet's eightieth birthday, the love poems between Ungaretti and Bruna Bianco are published, with the title "Dialogues". And for this precious edition Burri creates his own Combustione. Ungaretti is certainly the most illustrious but not the only poet with whom Burri was familiar. "A term - comments Corà - which, given the shy character of the Master, is not to be understood as continuous frequentation, but rather as consonance, a friendship that to be alive does not require the worry of shared daily life". It is two poets, Libero De Libero and Leonardo Sinisgalli, who introduce Burri to the Roman artistic environment. It was they, the day after Burri's return from American captivity, who presented him in the first exhibition held at the Galleria La Margherita in Rome in 1947. When, at the end of '49, Burri measured himself with the sacks containing the sugar destined for Italy's allies, Emilio Villa, a biblical scholar and poet, wrote "Alberto Burri cultivates as if in vitro, or rather as if in linen, these contractile anatomies of unexpressed organisms, uncertain between a semblance of out-of-use biological materials and an ideal of lightning-fast universes between the gigantic and the minimal: a wide-open ambiguity, a desire to grasp memories of things that must be clarified". Interesting contextual events are planned within the same project that will involve, in addition to the MAON, the University of Calabria, the Palazzo delle Clarisse in Amantea, Villa Rendano in Cosenza, Studio Gallery in Lamezia Terme.
“ALBERTO BURRI AND THE POETS - Matter and sound of the word” is an exhibition promoted by the Calabria Region, as part of the POR CALABRIA FESR 2007/2013 funds – Natural, cultural resources and sustainable tourism, Integrated regional development project “Historical cultural events”.
With the collaboration of: European Union; Italian Republic; Calabria Region; Municipality of Rende, Department of the Historic Center; "A.Capizzano" Center of Rende; Palazzo Albizzini Burri Collection Foundation of Città di Castello; Master's Degree in History of Art at the University of Calabria.
And of: Province of Catanzaro; Carmine Domenico Rizzo Foundation of Rende; Giuliani Foundation of Cosenza; CO.RE. School of Advanced Training in Conservation and Restoration; Classical High School “T. Campanella” of Reggio Calabria, Unesco Club Cosenza; Palazzo delle Clarisse of Amantea; Teatro Rossosimona of Rende; Cultural Association Renaissance Center of Cosenza; Cultural Association P-ART of Lamezia Terme; BCC Mediocratati; Mondadori Bookstore of Cosenza; Doppia Corsia; Mediterranean Diet srl; Italian Sommelier Foundation; Fidapa of Cosenza; Fidapa of Rende; Ruggeropegna.it; Three onions on the dresser, Rende; Cantine Giraldi, Rende.
