Arte Informale

Alberto Burri worked in Rome and was a role model for younger artists. By observing the connection between culture and nature he saw that material had an existence of its own and that he as the artist was required to use the energy from the organic materials. Burri was a solitary, quiet and aloof artist. Burri addressed the issues of energy, life, death, and destruction into his work through the use of natural and industrial materials. Sacchi The Sacchi was first created in 1950 but hundreds were made. Burri created these Sacchi by tearing and scoring pieces of burlap, adding stitching, then placing them on a canvas. Sometimes they were singed or accompanied by paint, red plastic or resin. On one hand the Sacchi acted as a concept of incorporating aspects of everyday life into art. On the other hand, it was thought to be associated with the body. Burri had been trained as a doctor and worked as a surgeon in the war until he was captured and sent to an American POW camp in Texas, which is where he first started using burlap sacs. His past was the basis for a general consensus between critics was that it was a suggestion to the troubled status of Burri after the war. Lorenza Trucchi suggested that the burlap acted as a skin that Burri could project his traumatized recollections on. Francesco Arcangeli implied that Burri used violence to recognize and remind the viewers of the war. However, Maurizio Calvesi brought up the meaning of the material itself. At the time when Arte Informale was starting up in Italy the war had ended, the economy was fluctuating and the U.S Marshall Plan had been put into place. Calves thought that Burri's use of the burlap sac was due to the commonality of the leftover food bags and that he was commemorating poverty. ==Lucio Fontana==

Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) was one of the key figures of the post-war contemporary art scene in Europe. He was the founder of the Spatialism movement in Milan, and is best known for his Concetti spaziali (Spatial Concepts) where he pierced and cut canvases that worked to open up the flat surface of the painting into real space. His ideas were influential in the development of artists’ groups such as Azimuth and the Zero Group, as well as to the development of Arte Povera. In 1946 he wrote Manifesto Blanco that was signed by a number of his students in Buenos Aires. At the end of the 1950s Fontana showed his work at the Venice Biennale and other parts of Europe such as Germany and France. Fontana's contribution lies in the transition from an art of representation to an art of sheer perception, in which the work is a part of reality. Although Fontana does not identify himself as an informal artist, the language used in his work fits within the qualities of this movement. ==Ennio Morlotti==

Ennio Morlotti was an Italian painter who was part of the Arte Informale movement.He met up with the Arte Informale group when he visited Paris in 1947. [http://www.oxfordartonline.com.ezproxymfa.flo.org/subscriber/article/grove/art/T059674?q=morlotti&search=quick&pos=2&_start=1#firsthit This meeting is what started leading him in the direction of Matter Painting. He showed his works in the Venice Biennale in 1948, 1952, and 1956. [http://www.oxfordartonline.com.ezproxymfa.flo.org/subscriber/article/grove/art/T059674?q=morlotti&search=quick&pos=2&_start=1#firsthit The main theme of his works has been landscapes and his own style focuses on color and material on the work of art. He works with the natural pattern of nature in organic and inorganic forms. [http://www.oxfordartonline.com.ezproxymfa.flo.org/subscriber/article/grove/art/T059674?q=morlotti&search=quick&pos=2&_start=1#firsthit Morlotti along with Emilio Vedova and other artists signed the Manifestio del Realismo in 1946 in Milan stating that the style of Realism is dependent on communication with others as opposed to Naturalism or Abstraction. ==Emilio Vedova==

Emilio Vedova (1919-2006) was a self-taught painter from Venice. At the end of World War II he took an active part in the liberation of Venice and in 1946 he joined the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, a movement that aimed at reconciling social revolution in artistic expression. Vedova was influenced by art movements such as Cubism and Expressionism and admired the works of Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Goya and Picasso. In the 1940s his style became increasingly gestural and began to fit in with the qualities of Lyrical Abstraction or Abstract Expressionism. Vedova's works were attempting to explore the three-dimensional space through painting and to achieve depth within space. ==Giuseppe Capogrossi==

Giuseppe Capogrossi (1900-1972) was an Italian painter from Rome. Around 1950 Capogrossi transitioned from figurative painting towards abstraction. In 1951 he founded the Gruppo Origine along with Ballocco, Colla and Burri. “Their manifesto advocated the refusal of three-dimensional figuration, the use of color to serve a purely expressive purpose, and the use of primitive images, whose significance dates back to the birth of writing systems and symbols”. After this time, Capogrossi composed his paintings on the basis of a single symbol- a sort of trident- which is repeated on his canvases and collages. In Capogrossi's work he discussed the impossibility of communication from artist to viewer, so he stressed that the artist must show the viewer what he wishes to communicate. ==References==