THE GUGGENHEIM IN NEW YORK RENDERS HOMAGE TO ALBERTO BURRI ARTEiN - International Art Magazine Here you are. You came back. You were their prisoner, but they freed you. And you came back. Here you are in the spiral-shaped building, your portrait repeated a hundred times, because every artwork always contains the artist’s seed, even when what we see are burlap bags, tar, burnt plastic, insulation board: what we find will always be you and your way of seeing the world. Here you are; you came back. The war was almost over, you were a military doctor, a young man who still believed in people and science. You did your duty. You would have preferred to heal, to save the world to restore it to those who would come after. But there was no after, and the horror of the war continued. And you didn’t believe anymore You would have wanted to paint angels and madonnas like the painters of old, you would have lit a flame of hope the way Rothko was doing, but you were ever more convinced that darkness and the night were the perfect places from which to scream at the world without disturbing the sleepers. Before you came Caravaggio. Along with you, Francis Bacon. Wounded, souls lacerated by the splinters of History that stab the soul and cause pain. God knows how much they hurt, even if people say that art should arouse feelings or decorate army tents, when art was the only weapon they didn’t prohibit in that prisoner of war camp in Texas…