COMPOSITION

As my small but loyal band of followers well knows, I consider Alberto Burri and Mark Rothko the two greatest artists of the second half of the last century.

Of course, there were other extraordinary interpreters of their time—like De Kooning, Gorky, Fautrier, Afro, Hartung, Vedova, and so on.

But these two unparalleled artists managed to make their revolution without severing the umbilical cord with history, especially the Italian Renaissance.

Burri’s decisive relationship with form and matter in his research cannot be separated from his personal roots in central Italy—and thus from the culture tied to that world.

Then Burri sent us all the most important messages, decisive for me, about the determinism yet also the creativity of matter, managing to present it and make us perceive it as the primary site of artistic events, as the moment—or rather, the many moments—of those epiphanic artistic wellsprings.

But in this stunning *Tar* (which I personally consider one of the most beautiful, fascinating, and successful of his entire output), alongside the canonical message of the cycle—about matter—there are also the almost imperceptible yet sumptuous vibrations of the colored inlays, the subtle yet vivid chromatic tones, the dynamism of the fields.

This *Tar* is a work that speaks to us not just of matter, but also of light, color, vibration—even evoking certain 14th-century suggestions.

Only Burri could achieve something like this.

Prof. Giovanni Granzotto