The Raul Gardini Foundation supports the BURRIRAVENNAORO exhibition which was held from 14 October 2023 to 14 January 2024 at the Museum of Art of the city of Ravenna, as part of the VIII Biennial of Contemporary Mosaic.
The exhibition, curated by Bruno Corà, traced the history of the intense relationship that maestro Alberto Burri has had with Ravenna since the end of the 1980s.
Conceiving several cycles of works inspired by the history and artistic culture of the city, Burri, in one of his latest series, embodies and transfigures in the contrast of black and gold, dark and light, the dialogue with the historical mosaic of Ravenna, in balance between spirituality and materiality, in the current situation of a city in which the vestiges of the past have progressively intertwined with the productive and industrial developments of the present.
In the context of the Biennial of Contemporary Mosaic, Burri’s works were a precious opportunity to explore the multiple aesthetic suggestions and meaning that the monumental and mosaic testimonies from the early Christian and Byzantine eras of Ravenna have offered and continue to offer, within the confines of traditional techniques or outside, reinventing the codes of mosaic.
Nearly one hundred works were exhibited in the MAR rooms, with examples that have earned Burri the National Lincei Prize for graphic work. In this sense, the two areas of his painting and chalcographic production, integrated with the presence of large red sculpture, Grande Ferro R (commissioned by Raul Gardini in 1990), at the Palazzo delle Arti e dello Sport “Mauro De André”, outline the boundaries of a highly relevant return of the master from Tiferno to the city of Ravenna which he loved.
Biennale del Mosaico Contemporaneo
Still in the context of the Contemporary Mosaic Biennal, within the design and mosaic section, the Raul Gardini Foundation in collaboration with MAR presented “The dead city”, a project conceived in January 2007 by the designer Ettore Sottsass to be realized at Villa Monaldina in the space of helipad. The mosaic work, presented in the design and mosaic section, is inspired by the maquette of the 2007 project. Created with the Ravenna Byzantine technique the work was exhibited together with the original project and the 3D model created by Ettore Sottsass.
