A dizzying vortex of shimmering reflections, iridescence, and chromatic variations: these are Michele Burato’s “fire paintings”. Thirty works, spanning nearly a decade of production, offer direct testimony to an artistic approach rooted in an original and continuous exploration of shaping glass. Michele Burato began his journey into glass towards the late 1980s. He started by creating flat compositions, initially using fragments of old murrine and later incorporating self-made murrine, which he fused into multicolored plates using small electric kilns. Within a few years, he started combining glass elements never before used in Murano, layering them onto a monochrome sheet as if it were a canvas. He introduced the use of glass stucco, applying it with a spatula like paint; an ultra-fine glass powder, as soft as talcum, which he spread across the surface with a brush or powder puff to create delicate shading. He also incorporated irregular shards, threads, and bands of color to achieve abstract compositions of great originality and expressive freedom.
His desire to paint with glass, breaking away from Murano’s traditional techniques and color palettes, led him to discover Bullseye glass— a semi-finished glass produced in hues entirely new to the Murano tradition. Burato became a pioneer in using this material, which was typically employed in the U.S. for glass fusing, but which he worked with through roll-up and blowing techniques. As a result, many of his two-dimensional works take on a sculptural quality. In his art, Burato masterfully blends formal minimalism with maximalist color expression: on one hand, the obsessive precision in arranging murrine fragments, and on the other, the raw, unrestrained gestures of pigment thrown onto the glass surface.
