As with most artists, Burri’s works on paper are his least costly. His experiments with the “Combustione” technique on paper tend to sell between $20,000 and $55,000. Burri also produced numerous mixed-media collages, which fetch up to $100,000. The record for an original work on paper is ¤84,000 ($108,808), for a mixed-media “Combustione” from 1957, which sold at Sotheby’s Milan in 2004.

As for Burri’s prints, several editions of 50 and 90 exist, and 15 to 20 etchings and lithographs show up at auction each year in either the contemporary-art or the prints and multiples sales. “While they often go to general print collectors, there is also a trickle-down effect—they catch the eye of those who can’t afford his paintings,” says Tudor Davies, the head of the prints department at Christie’s New York. Christie’s sold three 1977 aquatints last February, each from an edition of 50, for less than $2,000 each. “More-dramatic pieces can cost up to $20,000,” says Davies. The record for a Burri print is $29,860, for the 1965 abstraction Combustioni, from an edition of 11. The five-panel etching and aquatint was not created with fire, but was likely inspired by Burri’s “Combustione” pieces.

“There is a lot of space for his market to grow, because he is one of the greatest postwar artists,” says Christie’s Bassetti. Moreover, Burri, Fontana and Manzoni, “are so inexpensive compared with the New York School,” says David Leiber, the director of New York’s Sperone Westwater, which organized a show of the three artists in 2000. “A major de Kooning or Rothko is in a new price realm, but you can still find a very interesting work by Fontana, Manzoni or even Burri, for under $1 million.” The New York-based art adviser Allan Schwartzman, who counts Rachofsky among his clients, adds, “What we’ve come to realize lately—because we have a more international view of contemporary art and because an increased significance has been placed on the collecting patterns of Europeans due to the strength of the euro and thus their buying power—is that Burri was as significant as Rauschenberg.” According to Schwartzman, the only question is whether great works by the artist will appear on the market.

The next chance to bid on a Burri will be this October in London at Christie’s sale of 20th-century Italian art, where Rosso, a 1953 painting made with pumice, oil and Vinavil, an industrial paint, will be auctioned with a high estimate of £1.2 million ($2.4 million).

"Artist Dossier: Alberto Burri" originally appeared in the May 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's May 2008 Table of Contents.