Italian figurative artist, Alberto Burri (Città di Castello, province of Perugia, Umbria 1915 – Nice, France 1995), took a degree in Medicine and served as a military doctor for Italy’s Army during WWII. Painting started as a mere pastime, during his internment at the war camp in Hereford, Texas, and, eventually, turned into his full-time career, once he returned to Italy. 

Burri - who, since 1963, spent every winter with his wife under the warm sun of Los Angeles’ Hollywood Hills for almost thirty years – was deeply inspired by Death Valley’s timeless and primitive landscapes. Forty years ago, Burri donated one of his monumental works with his trademark cracks, Grande Cretto Nero, to the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, at UCLA campus, and symbolically to the geographical area that had inspired him.