Gibellina: open air contemporary art museum
The 1968 Belice Valley earthquake changed the face of a vast area of western Sicily. The small village of Gibellina, among the hardest hit, is today, with its high cultural and artistic value, the emblem of this dramatic event.
New Gibellina was built in a safer and more easily accessible area, about 11 km away from the destroyed town, while one of the largest land art works in the world was created on the ruins of Old Gibellina : Burri's Cretto.
Gibellina, the art of rebirth
In the seventies, the then Mayor Ludovico Corrao imagined the new city as a large laboratory, where artists from all over the world could express themselves and create a true open air museum. His did not remain a utopia. Internationally renowned artists and architects responded to his appeal and contributed with their ideas and works to create what is now considered one of the most interesting contemporary art destinations in Europe, a really museum en plain air.
Internationally renowned architects, artisans and artists created an incredible urban plan where today it is possible to admire buildings, installations, sculptures, works of art and spaces of collective interest of great artistic value.
The large Star by Pietro Consagra , placed in 1881 at the entrance to the city, is the symbol of this extraordinary collective work, but also of the entire Belice Valley .
The big Burri's Cretto was created by the artist between 1984 and 1989. Like a sun-scorched surface crisscrossed by deep cracks, the Cretto is crisscrossed by fractures that were once the streets and alleys of Gibellina. An enormous white expanse that invites silence and remembrance. One walks on tiptoe within the cretto. The body measures the space, the mind returns to the history of the place. Every step is a gesture of memory.
What to see in Gibellina Nuova
MAC, Museum of Contemporary Art
The visitor will be able to follow a historical-chronological itinerary to appreciate the different poetics of contemporary art from the 1900s to the latest avant-gardes.
Case Di Stefano, Museum of Mediterranean Weaves
Not far from Gibellina, in the locality of Baglio Di Stefano, there is the baronial residence Di Stefano, transformed into a cultural space in 1995 based on a project by Marcella Aprile, Roberto Collovà, Teresa La Rocca, Ettore Tocco, Valentina Acierno, Alessandro D'Amico, Stefano Marina, L. Raspanti and Lorenzo Salon.
Among the buildings to admire in the city:
- Spherical Church by Ludovico Quaroni
- System of five squares connected to each other by Laura Thermes and Franco Purini
- Francesco Venezia's Secret Garden which contains the façade of the earthquake-stricken cathedral
- Meeting, a building-sculpture dedicated to multipurpose activities by Pietro Consagra
- Town Hall by Vittorio Gregotti and Giuseppe Samonà
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Museum of Contemporary Art Ludovico Corrao of Gibellina
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