Sack and Red

In his work Sacco e rosso Alberto Burri’s (Città di Castello, 1915 –Nice, 1995) interest in materials is seen in specific formal choices.
Gaps open up in the worn weave of the jute, holes and unravelled areas are mended, sometimes patched over with new fabric or highlighted by a marked change in colour. The traces of wear and tear on the sack and the irreparable wound gaping open in the middle endow the artist’s gestural work with drama and present themselves as partially reconstituted signs of existential accretion.
The work that Cerruti purchased is not only from Burri’s bestknown series, namely the Sacks, but also from the personal collection of the renowned New York art dealer Martha Jackson, who was largely responsible for the artist’s success in the United States from the mid-1950s.