Burri and Nunzio: Nero x Nero

Mazzoleni opens its new Milan exhibition space on Tuesday September 30, 2025 with the exhibition Nero x Nero (Black x Black), dedicated to works by Alberto Burri and Nunzio, curated by Bruno Corà, art critic and President of the Burri Foundation in Città di Castello.

Uniting two of the most significant voices in Italian art, the exhibition reflects Mazzoleni’s long-standing ties with both artists. Burri's works have accompanied the gallery's nearly forty years history through major projects, including solo exhibitions in Turin (2004, 2012) and London (2015). Nunzio has been central to the London programme with two solo shows, the first curated by Kenneth Baker in 2019, and more recently, in 2023 with a presentation of previously unseen drawings. Both were also brought together in Burri, Kounellis, Nunzio. Ethic of the Artwork, curated by Corà in London in 2021.

The exhibition underscores Mazzoleni's dual vocation: on one hand, the commitment to promoting the great masters of post-war Italy, and on the other, fostering dialogue with contemporary artists. Here, Burri and Nunzio meet around the theme of black.

In the critical text accompanying the exhibition, Corà recalls that the first work installed by Burri at Palazzo Albizzini was Catrame 1 (1948). In the following years, black became a constant presence in his work, “like the cosmic darkness of an unknown dimension to venture into, Burri’s black is always an elaboration of spaced matter, where form and an equilibrium shared with the ‘caecitas’ of poets still reign.” Black is also the result of a transformative action of fire, as within the Plastiche series, in which Burri pushes the potential of matter to its limits. Choosing the alchemical nature of “...flame as an infernal brush”, as Brandi defined it in his famous 1963 essay, Burri paints with fire and exploits its entire potential, simultaneously destructive and generative.

For Nunzio, fire is equally transformative. “A purifying bath that changes the state of matter and evokes its fossil, the darkness,” he explains. From his earliest works, shadow, night and black have marked his research. Burnt wood and lead, his chosen materials, open a dialectic between permanence and change: wood as night and shadow, lead as light, mutable and reflective. As Corà writes, “What renders Nunzio’s work dialectical with Burri’s is the attention to the qualification of form as an ethical entity that confronts and withdraws from time.”

Burri and Nunzio: Nero x Nero
October 1–December 20, 2025
Private view: Tuesday 30 September, 10am–9pm

Mazzoleni, Milan—Via Senato, 20, 20121 Milano. Opening hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10am–1pm / 2–7pm. Sunday and Monday by appointment. Press office: Lucile Brun / lucile@mazzoleniart.com / T +39 340 0664675.