Bottega Veneta pays homage to
Alberto Burri with its fall 2016
advertising campaign.
Dutch photographer and artist
Viviane Sassen — who also shot the brand’s most recent spring campaign — lensed models Simon Fitskie and Rianne Van Rompaey at “The Great Cretto,” a landscape artwork undertaken by Burri in 1984 and completed in 2015. A memorial to the Sicilian village of Gibellina, which was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1968, the work consists of blocks of concrete, featuring cracks between them, covering a surface of about 86,122 square feet.
The artwork was celebrated with a documentary screened at the Alberto Burri retrospective held last year at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
“Viviane’s photography has an inescapable, enigmatic quality to it, a refinement and acute independence,” said
Bottega Veneta creative director
Tomas Maier. “Together we have explored both the artistic landmarks for the campaigns that are more than a backdrop, but rather an added voice to our collaboration.”
Maier started collaborating with visual artists on the
Bottega Veneta advertising campaigns in 2001. The list of personalities who teamed with the company over the years includes Nobuyoshi Araki, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Pieter Hugo, Peter Lindbergh and Juergen Teller.
The advertising campaign will break in international titles beginning next month.