Prampolini Burri | Della Materia
Ceresio Investors is the Main Sponsor of the exhibition “Prampolini Burri. Della Materia”, on view at the Collezione Giancarlo and Danna Olgiati.
(21 September 2025 - 11 January 2026).
Curated by Gabriella Belli and Bruno Corà, in collaboration with the Fondazione Burri and with exhibition design by Mario Botta, the show presents an unprecedented dialogue between two major figures of 20th-century Italian art: Enrico Prampolini and Alberto Burri.
A journey through the century that places matter at the heart of artistic expression and conceptual exploration. From Prampolini’s Futurist and polymaterial experiments to Burri’s radical material poetics, the exhibition traces a path that breaks away from traditional painting. Sponge, cork, tar, sacks, plastic, and cellotex become tools of a linguistic revolution that reflects the tensions and transformations of the modern era.
The comparison between Enrico Prampolini and Alberto Burri stems from the curators’ desire to explore two artistic trajectories that, while distant in time and form, share a radical commitment to matter as an autonomous language. Prampolini, a central figure in Futurism and the European avant-gardes, was already experimenting in the early 20th century with a painting that opened up to three-dimensionality and heterogeneous materials. Burri, on the other hand, developed a raw and essential visual language in the aftermath of World War II, transforming industrial and humble materials into surfaces charged with silence and energy. While Prampolini looked to the cosmos and visionary abstraction, Burri delved into the material to reveal its most essential truth. The exhibition does not seek formal similarities, but rather highlights a shared desire to redefine the very meaning of the artwork.
The exhibition
The exhibition layout unfolds in two distinct and chromatically opposite environments: white walls for Prampolini’s cosmic and geometric visions, black walls for Burri’s powerful material interventions. Among the works on display are Intervista con la materia (1930), Geometria aerodinamica (1934–35), the Catrami, Sacchi, Cretti, and Cellotex series from the 1980s and 1990s.
La Collezione Olgiati
The Giancarlo and Danna Olgiati Collection, open to the public in the exhibition space adjacent to the LAC cultural centre, renews the works on display every year, drawing from its rich Collection covering 120 years of art history from the early 20th century to the present day. The Collection's focus is on Italian art that looks to the rest of the world.
