Alberto Burri's Grande Nero Cretto Celebrated at UCLA

Ahead of the inauguration of the new museum dedicated to Alberto Burri, the 40th anniversary of his monumental work Grande Nero Cretto is being celebrated at UCLA. The event Burri Prometheia, organized by UCLA's Italian Department and the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles on January 9-10, 2017, highlights the significance of Burri's largest work outside Italy. The Grande Nero Cretto (1976/77), donated to the UCLA campus forty years ago, measures 15m x 5m and consists of seven hundred pieces of fired ceramic. Originally from Città di Castello, the work was transported and installed at UCLA's Sculpture Garden, where it now serves both artistic and architectural functions. The event's theme is fire, a primary element in Burri's research, alongside his use of materials like iron, wood, sacks, and plastics, culminating in the ceramic of the UCLA Cretto. The world premiere of the film Variazioni: A Visual Polyphony (2017), directed by Giuseppe Sterparelli with cinematography by Lisa Rinzler (known for collaborations with Wim Wenders and Martin Scorsese), will explore Burri's early experiments with poet Emilio Villa (1914-2003), for whose visionary lyrics he created his first combustions on paper.