Alberto Burri
Cretto di Gibellina

THE REVIEW

The Cretto di Gibellina is the largest existing work of Land art in the world. Created by the artist Alberto Burri between 1984 and 1989, it is still little known and seldom visited.

But let's go step by step.

In 1968, an earthquake in Belice, an arid region of Sicily, destroyed the town of Gibellina. Only rubble remained.

A few years later, Gibellina was rebuilt a few kilometers away.

The new mayor, a certain Corrao, a senator of the republic and a visionary, called the most fashionable artists of the day who were hanging around Rome at that time (Schifano, Guttuso, Consagra, Accardi - just to name a few, including Burri) and whom he knew personally to create something that would restore importance, visibility, historical and artistic value to a town designed at a drawing board, in short, to give a new soul to Gibellina.

The artists arrived and created amazing works, now and forever (hopefully) visitable in the admirable museum of Gibellina. However, Burri did not believe he could do anything for the new Gibellina.

He asked Corrao to take him to the old Gibellina, which was nothing more than a pile of rubble. There he created his shroud, a gigantic concrete cast (taking almost four years), within which one can walk, a monument (precisely, with the function of memory) to death.

Art often ceases to be pleasing when it does not fulfill the aesthetic function, when, for example, it reminds us of death or suffering. Today, there is a tendency to enjoy only what is beautiful, and artists like Jago are all the rage, but we forget that in the 1400s (and not only then) the famous authors narrated the martyrdom of Christ on the cross. The cretto is not only a concrete cast, but a fierce imprint, a dry and cruel cloak, indeed a shroud spread over death.

Something similar, with a similar function I mean, also exists in Berlin and is dedicated to the Holocaust. Only that one is visited by millions of tourists.

Visit it!