Gruppo Origine

Gruppo Origine, whose name translates as the group of origin, was a short-lived Italian art association founded in Rome in 1951. It comprised four artists: Alberto Burri, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Ettore Colla and Mario Ballocco. The group issued a manifesto proclaiming the need for a return to simple, primal forms and colours in abstract art. Its members sought to purify abstraction of the excessive decorativeness and geometric complexity into which, in their view, contemporary non-objective art had slipped, and to restore to it an expressive, sign-like directness. They rejected three-dimensional illusion and richness of colour in favour of reduced, often monochrome forms, with an emphasis on the materiality of the surface and the elementary graphic sign. Despite its brief existence, the group dissolving soon after its foundation, Gruppo Origine played a notable role in postwar Italian art and foreshadowed the later work of its members. In particular, Alberto Burri went on to become a leading master of material art (arte materica), while Capogrossi developed his recognisable system of comb-like signs.