Date unknown, 1982: The Brooklyn Museum has been selected for the New York showing of the first exhibition i[n] America of “The Voyage,” a major new work by the Italian artist Alberto Burri.
The exhibition will be on view from May 8 through July 5, 1982. “The Voyage” (Il Viaggio) represents both a culmination and a setting out for the artist, who is considered to be the foremost Italian abstract painter of the post World War II period. A practicing physician until the age of 30, Burri began a new career as an artist at the end of World War II, when he began painting the stark landscape of Texas while a prisoner of war. Since then he has devoted himself with great austerity to exploring a set of possibilities that lie along the borders of printmaking, painting and collage.
“The Voyage” is a work of monumental scale, consisting of 10 panels 8 feet high, 7 of them 12 feet long and 3 of them 8 feet square. The series summarizes Burri’s lifelong concern with space, form and the physical properties of the painting surface. It will be given a special installation in the Museum’s largest skylit gallery on the Fifth Floor.
There is an illustrated hardcover catalog on sale at The Museum Bookshop for $30.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1982, 020.
