Everyone calls him The Great Crack And that's enough, to refer to the work created by Alberto Burri in Gibellina, on the remains of the old town destroyed by the earthquake, known as the Belice, back in 1968 and rebuilt further down the valley, kilometres away, no longer mountainous, therefore, but flat. The new town, after so much hardship and postponements, delays, has taken the form of a place of art par excellence, where many artists and architects have excelled, making it a wonder that redeems so many clichés about contemporary art, that it would be self-referential, entirely anti-architectural, confined to houses and museums. You enter the N.G. [New Gibellina], passing under a large star, of gigantic dimensions, a work by Pietro Consagra… and the passage is quite telling, which still sees Consagra in a large building that imitates seismic waves and in a cemetery enclosure, and we find Schiavocampo as Cappello, Simeti as Paladino, Pomodoro as Carla Accardi, with many others such as Romano and Leto, in works scattered throughout the urban fabric, thanks to the work of Ludovico Corrao and his deputy Giulio Ippolito.
Corrao, a refined and cultured politician, became mayor, not of reconstruction, but of new construction, with art and museums, theatres and cathedrals, and a foundation, called Orestiadi, starting from a Orestea, in Sicilian, by Emilio Isgrò. A grandiose utopian city work, as conceived and realised during the Renaissance, from Pienza to Sabbioneta, from Sforzinda to Mesola. The ruin of the earthquake, steep and winding, but rich with memories and stories, poor but beautiful, has been set within a cyclopean work of art, of 94 thousand square metres, in a gigantic pour of cement, which paradoxically metaphysical, mimics roads and squares that once existed, generating a labyrinth of provoked craquelure, In a labyrinthine environment, within which one can get lost, only to find oneself from one side to another. From evil, from death, a modern pyramid was born, which encloses echoes and stories of so many people who lived there, who died there, but with this monument, which is absolutely not funereal, they come back to life.
KLESSIDRA | EDITED BY FRANCESCO GALLO MAZZEO
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