Alberto Burri and Frank Stella Influence in My Works

As I already pointed out many times, I started to do... "artistic disasters" from when I was very little. And the fact of burning things was inspired by Alberto Burri.

His pieces of cutter sacks, burned woods, fused plastics, and red, gray and black areas alternating in them, is printed in my eyes even if I saw his work only in my father's art books, and I finally saw one of his "masterpieces" in person, only when I was a grown up.

A Serendipitous Encounter

How this happened was very curious. I was still working in advertising and, entering the office of Mister Voghi, an important texture producer, ready to explain how I could help him promoting his great textiles when, with the tail of the eye, my attention was captured by an immense composition of, what I thought, Alberto Burri!!!

Everything was there: the burned woods, the sacks and the red areas!!! I asked Mr. Voghi: "is this what I think it is???"

He was very pleased and said: "Yes and I bought it directly from him!!!!"

That, after we talked about Burri for more than one hour (!!!), was the beginning of a professional relationship that lasted many years!!!

The Greatness of Alberto Burri

But, let's not digress from art. These are a few strong examples of the greatness of Alberto Burri that was deeply influenced by the tragedy of war and the consequent destructions!!!

Discovering Frank Stella

At the contrary of Alberto Burri, Frank Stella was a revelation to me when I arrived in the US, 25 years ago. Yes, I didn't know him before.

But, here another thing very curious: when I first arrived here, I didn't have any English so, to think of making a living as an artist was simply out of the question.

Before coming here, the idea was: I could arrange store windows with European ideas about a different look. In Milano, I went around the top stores to sketch ideas adding them to mine in order to have something to show here in the US.

Curiously, one of the ideas was this:

When here, visiting libraries, I saw a book of Frank Stella. I liked the cover very much for the art and for the fact that he was smoking an Italian cigar called... Toscano, as I was doing at that time!!!

With great surprise, I noted that one of my sketches was incredibly very similar to what Stella was doing with his colored curved wood compositions!!!

Frank Stella's Legacy

Here is a retrospective and interview with Frank Stella:

His recent works:

Unfortunately, he recently passed away so, thank you very much Frank Stella, for giving all of us the opportunity to visually get lost in your joyful compositions!!!!

Thank you for reading!

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