Alberto Burri’s Teatro Continuo Resurrected in Milan After 25 Years

Teatro Continuo, a public sculpture the Italian artist Alberto Burri offered to Milan in the early 1970s, and which was subsequently demolished, will be rebuilt next year to commemorate the centenary of the artist’s birth, the Art Newspaper reports.

Teatro Continuo, which was installed in Sempione Park, was Burri’s contribution in the “Contatto Arte-Città” section of the XV Milan Triennale, in 1973. The piece sought to explore the crossover between life and theater, and was formed by a large concrete stage complete with six steel wings.

But in 1989, the local authorities demolished the piece, citing its poor conditions and decay. According to Domus, the decision seriously damaged the relationship between the artist and the city.

The piece is now set to return to its original location. It will be reconstructed following the artist’s original designs, which have been provided by the Fondazione Burri. The project has an estimated budget of €150,000, and the finalized piece will be owned by the Comune di Milano and maintained by the Triennale di Milano.

“Reconstructing the Teatro Continuo is like reconstructing a piece of Milan’s cityscape, a previously missing part of a story involving other coeval works, such as Giorgio De Chirico’s Bagni Misteriosi […] and Arman’s Accumulazione Musicale e Seduta, also created for the XV Triennale,” wrote the architect Giacomo Pirazzoli in Domus.

To coincide with the celebrations of the Italian artist’s centenary, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York is organizing a Burri retrospective, slated to open next October. A six-volume catalogue raisonné of Burri’s oeuvre will also be published.