Ian Talbot is a friend I met through Twitter. When Ian mentioned the artist Alberto Burri in his writings I was reminded of visits I had made to the Alberto Burri Foundation in Città di Castello in Umbria Italy.

With my children I used to spend every summer staying with family in Italy. We were staying in Sansepolcro Tuscany, just on the border with Umbria, when I first heard about the Alberto burri Foundation.  Sansepolcro is close to the town of Citta di Castello, and in conversation about painting an aunt told me about the Alberto Burri Foundation.

I enjoyed the idea of the juxtoposition between two small neighbouring Italian towns, each having an artist whose work I liked, yet there being centuries seperating them. Città di Castello and Sansepolcro are not just neighbors, they are often competing ones.

Sansepolcro is the birthplace of the early Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca famous for his wonderful Frescos.

Seeing the Piero Frescos at the age of seventeen was a contributing factor to my becoming an artist. To discover some years later there was also the work of a contemporary painter Alberto Burri, so close by was thrilling.  I had seen Burri's paintings in magazines and books but to see it them the flesh was a wonderful experience.  The scale of the building, the sculpture and the paintings were something the pictures hadn't conveyed.

See: Ian's comments about Alberto Burri at:  Ian Talbot: Retrospective - Sciagraph 2/04 :: Sciagraphs 2

 

Here are some a few photographs from those visits.