Alberto Burri’s centenary exhibition cancelled by Charlie Hebdo

When Fondazione Burri sent us the notification about an exhibition of the post-war Italian master Alberto Burri at the European Parliament in Brussels, we were very excited to hear that we would have the chance to enjoy some of the artist’s works in such important institutional context. The show was planned at the cafeteria of one of the parliament main buildings, which was easily accessible to the public. However, when we eventually went to visit it, it was with great disappointment that we learned the organising committee had decided to cancel the exhibition since the increased security measures following the terrorists attacks in Paris were making impossible for the audience to freely reach it.

 

In this situation, being prevented from the pleasure of art seems unimportant when compared to the much more serious consequences of the Paris attacks. However, one shouldn’t forget that it is the lack of ‘little’ freedoms like that of accessing culture, especially when this is connected to the openness of the citizen’s own political institution spaces, that might signal a slow erosion of the West’s democratic principles.

 

Regarding Alberto Burri’s exhibition, it is then quite fortunate that, even though the show didn’t really happen, the works were anyway transported and installed for the conference held for the opening, in which the organising committee paid tribute to the artist in occasion of the centenary of his birth. Having seen some archival images of these works made available by Fondazione Burri, what we feel confident to say is that, had the show not been cancelled, you would be reading an extensive report on Burri’s great use of material and its plastic/chromatic properties in creating works whose flatness and two-dimensionality are put into question, a sort of alternative take to the ‘spatialism’ of the other great post-war Italian master Lucio Fontana.

July 18, 2015